goneawayworld | Being Alone

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Being Alone

Who: South and anyone who encounters her
What: South trying to avoid everyone and her problems at once, and failing
Where: Various places on the Rig
When: Several days after South and York's arrivals
Warnings/Notes: None up front

South’s not really used to being alone, not really. Growing up with a twin you can’t shake for trying does that to a person, she supposes. As much as she resents it, resents him, it’s… a difficult adjustment, to make, one made infinitely harder by her lack of anywhere else to turn.

Turns out pissing off everyone you know from home is a poor choice, who’d’ve thunk it, huh?

Dealing with things in a healthy manner isn’t one of South’s strong suits, so rather than doing so she decides the best course of action is to simply avoid anywhere she might encounter her brother or get into another fight with Washington (he’s more than capable of handing her ass to her on a silver platter and she’s getting tired of it, if she’s honest) or have to deal with York (who’s just a pain in the ass, really).

For days, rather than get involved in anything festive or going out of her way to get to know the other New Hires, South spends her time in a few places:

a) On the Top Deck, which she finds supremely uncomfortable thanks to the daytime heat, but it also means most people won’t appear to bother her, so she considers it a fair trade. Sat near the edge, she sits and watches the fucked-up world outside and finds that it is possible to miss home, even when home sucks too.

Of course, it’s not a fool proof plan. When someone does come by and join her, she sighs to herself, but comments, “Weird fucking view, huh?”

b) In the Training Area, where she spends all of her time whaling on punching bags, lifting weights, running, or beating up training droids violently enough to break a couple. She could request her equipment but she’s not training to train, she’s there to exert restless energy and rage without directing it at the poor fucks around her. Easier to focus on the feeling of punching something than on your emotional turmoil!

The sound of someone coming up behind her makes her pivot, fist raised— but she holds back and huffs, instead, rolling her shoulders as her arm falls. “Watch it. Unless you wanna get hit, stay the fuck back.”

c) She wanders the gardens, the once, because even South sometimes needs somewhere relatively quiet to go. She’s not looking for anyone; quite the opposite, really, she just wants to get away from everything else for a while.

Unfortunately for her, she’s not the only one. Fortunately for whoever else she encounters, she’s at her least combative down here and simply says, “Kinda nice in here. Don’t remember the last time I saw so many fuckin’ plants.”

d) The Mess, is one of the few times she can’t get around communing with the group, but even during their shifts there the she tries her best to keep to herself by sitting as close to alone as she physically can. Perched at the ends of tables, not looking anyone in the eye, but occasionally glancing up at the sound of familiar voices before setting her gaze firmly back on her plate.

When someone sits nearby, she rolls her eyes and swallows her mouthful of food. “There’s other open seats, y’know.”

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South raises a brow and snorts, a sound that balances somewhere between amused and a 'really?'. "And that's you, huh, the popular girl?"

Looks young enough to be exactly that, South figures, which is enough to push down even South's instinctive urge to tell her to fuck off and mind her own business.

Stacia's the first person to make the connection between her name and the other Freelancers—at least, that the first to do so where South can hear it—and South sighs, dropping her fork.

"There was no South Carolina," she says, answering without answering. Her gaze flicks subconsciously across the room to the tall blonde that she shares half her features with, before flicking away just as quickly. "But it's just South. Nothing else."

"No one has argued when I've said so, so it must be true," Stacia says, grinning like she's letting South in on a joke. "Besides, I'm cute and can instill terror in grown men, I'm pretty sure that's the definition of a popular girl. Wash almost threw himself off of a bench entirely when I sat down next to him."

Why yes, she did see Wash and South's encounter on the network, and she is absolutely going to try and use that knowledge to get South to like her. She politely busies herself with her utensils and pretends she doesn't see South glancing across the room at the guy who is obviously her brother, with whom South is very obviously not sitting. He and the confrontation with Wash was what had put her onto the 'Dakota or Carolina' question in the first place.

"Just South it is," she says agreeably. "I usually stick to the names people tell me to call them, unless I'm trying to needle them. And even then, it's usually something snappy, like 'Cupcake'."

The mental image inspired by that anecdote, of hard-ass Washington—who has kicked South's ass no less than twice since she got here—throwing himself away from a teenage girl, is more than enough to get a snicker out of South.

"Now that's something I'd fuckin' pay to see."

She can't argue with that definition of popular girl nor does she feel inclined to, so she doesn't. She just takes a swig of her drink and wipes her mouth, then leans forward against the edge of the table, her food ignored for now.

"Good policy," she says. "Always better to piss people off on purpose than as a side-effect."

That's certainly what she's been doing, much to her own detriment.

"If I do it again, I'll try to record it," Stacia says. It's a lie, she doesn't like to make people uncomfortable without good reason, so the next time she invades Wash's personal space it's going to be to shove a magic key in him and rifle around in his memories. But still, selling it. "It was hilarious."

She raises her drink in a toast to pissing people off on purpose instead of by accident, though she taps it back on the table before she takes a sip, because etiquette training says that's how you do it with non-alcoholic beverages.

"Big fan of only pissing people off on purpose," she agrees. "At least you know which direction the murder attempts are coming from that way."

Weird think for a teenage "popular girl" to say, isn't it?

South lazily raises her own drink before taking a big gulp, which doesn't at all disguise the raised brow at that comment. It's a sentiment she can agree with, especially after recent events, but coming from Stacia?

"And how many murder attempts have you had to see coming?" she asks, almost dryly, as if taking it as a joke, but South isn't stupid.

If Jorgmund's dragging people here somehow, like she figures they are, they're probably picking people for a reason. She'd have to be naive to actually dismiss the idea that there's more to this teenage girl than meets the eye, even if she can't imagine for a second what.

"Just a handful," Stacia says. "It turns out that I'm really good at annoying supernatural bullshit that ought to be above my pay grade and surviving the experience." She takes a bite, chews, swallows. "But the political bullshit is the worst by far."

South blinks at her. That kind of deliberate, pointed blinking that perfectly embodies the very simple sentiment of 'what?'

"Supernatural bull—? Y'know what, nope, not even going to question it." She shakes her head and snorts. "I keep doing that. Being fucking surprised as if I didn't get greeted by the fucking Easter Bunny when I got here, fuckin..."

She mutters vaguely and takes another gulp of her drink to buy herself a second to think.

"Just a handful. Fucking hell. And I thought I got up to dangerous shit when I was a teenager."

Which she did; lots of fights, lots of other impulsive decisions, bids for attention. But by the end of her teen years she could more than handle herself; at 6'6" there weren't many things she couldn't come out the other side of better off than the other party. Then she went off to war. Arguably that was a dangerous teenage decision, too.

"Whatever, supernatural and political bullshit, okay, sure." There's the same dry edge to her voice, but it doesn't take a genius to realise that this is simply how South is with pretty much everything. "So, what, you fight monsters or something? Dodge political assassinations in your spare time?"

Stacia giggles, swinging her feet under the bench beneath her, because she's five-foot-nothing without the wedge heels Jorgmund only breaks out for her on missions.

"An angel tried to kill me when I was fifteen," she says, clearly enjoying South's suffering. "Which probably would have given me a crisis if I hadn't found out that I was a werewolf a few months before. Ending up in my ass in another universe was basically a matter of "I guess this is what's happening now"."

Whatever South expected to come out of Stacia’s mouth next it was not any of those words, let alone in that order. Yeah, okay, that qualifies as supernatural bullshit to the nth degree, but any attempt to process attempted murder via angel is immediately derailed by the second fact.

“Wait a fuckin— you’re a fucking werewolf? You. Little miss five-foot-fuck-all. A werewolf. An honest to god fucking werewolf.”

It’s that special kind of disbelief where no, she doesn’t doubt that Stacia’s telling the truth, but the truth is, quite frankly, batshit insane. It’s one thing to accept there’s universes where the supernatural is real, and another to realise a werewolf is just casually sitting beside you eating the same mediocre mess hall food that you are.

“What the fuck.”

Stacia slaps the table with both hands.

"Right?!" she says. "You can't tell, because they're so big on uniforms here, but I'm all about makeup and hair care and all the girliest shit you can think of. Nobody expects me to be the werewolf!"

She leans back, shaking her head. "You gotta laugh, right?"

"No fucking kidding," South says with an equally disbelieving laugh, dragging her hands over her face. "A fucking werewolf. Jesus christ."

More than meets the eye doesn't even seem to cover that. It certainly explains what Jorgmund would want with a high schooler, though.

"Yeah, I don't think I'd woulda guessed that in a million years. Take it you actually get bigger when you, y'know," vague gesturing, because she is not saying 'turn into a wolf' even if she accepts this reality, "because right now someone my size could like, throw you if they wanted to. Don't get me fucking wrong, I've seen someone not much bigger kick serious ass, but she had power armour and I coulda thrown her too."

"Oh, I absolutely get bigger," Stacia says. "I get, like, eight, eight-and-a-half feet tall? Which still makes me short, most werewolves hit about nine. I try to avoid getting in brawling range anyway, because bikini season is unforgiving enough without disembowelment scars."

Things Stacia has said seriously: that. Things Stacia keeps saying because they make her sound dippy teenager: also that.

"Fortunately there are--" she wiggles her fingers, "--maaaaaagic bullets, so I can shoot things that want to kill me instead of biting them to death. Well, not here, back home. But at least the shooting skills transfer over just fine."

South gives the comment another amused snort and a quirked brow.

"Not often you hear fucking eight feet being called short. Fucking hell. That's like the size of the hinge-heads and Brutes back home, and they're fucking terrifying. Bad idea to get in punching range with them, too. Think I'd take my chances with one over a werewolf, though."

Take her chances with the aliens over being here, honestly. She said it before to York and she meant it: aliens are simpler than humans when it comes to fucked-upness. At least they're up front about wanting to kill everyone.

She shakes her head and jokes, "Remind me not to get on your fuckin' bad side."

"I don't know what either of those are, but if they're eight feet tall I don't think I'd want to fight them up close," Stacia agrees. "But werewolves are, you know, pointy at five of our six ends, and I'm certain some asshole out there has figured out how to attach a knife to their tail."

She grins again. "If it helps any, most people have survived my wrath. On the downside, the survival rate is up because I have good enough self-control to realize that I can annoy the hell out of someone for much longer than I can commit violence on them."

"They're aliens. Big fuck-off lizards and apes. With big fuckin' guns. And stronger than like, any above-average person," South explains with the nonchalance of normality. "So yeah, you really don't wanna get up close."

She snickers a little, shaking her head.

"Guess I better not provoke you to that tactic either, then. But I got a certain tolerance for annoying bullshit," her eyes subconsciously flick across the room again, if only for a second, "you'd have to get pretty creative."

Not that she actually doubts Stacia's capability to do just that, or that she's actually that hard to annoy.

"Yeah, no thanks, I'll pass on the aliens," Stacia says. She's pretty sure if they did show up in her universe, the Garou would absolutely end up fighting them, though.

"Oh please don't challenge me to be creative," she says. "I'm the youngest of three by eight years, I have all of the most annoying habits of a youngest child combined with all the stubbornness of an only child. I barely need encouragement, just incubation time."

South snorts. "Talk about a deadly combination. Okay, maybe you would be able to pull it off. Maybe. I fuckin' grew up a—"

She stops practically mid-syllable and her jaw flexes, her eyes repeating that same subconscious flick across the room. She considers just flat out changing the subject, but even she knows that would just draw even more attention to the topic than she already has by freezing up.

So, she just coughs and continues.

"—a twin. The 'younger'," she rolls her eyes, "twin. Growing up like that gives you a unique fuckin' skillset for being a pain in the ass, let me fuckin' tell you."

Subtle, South. Stacia doesn't roll her eyes and doesn't follow the glance at the man across the room either because she hasn't endeared herself to the other woman enough yet to be that rude.

"A twin, huh?" she asks rhetorically. "That must have been either fun or a pain in the ass. Or both. But I'd imagine that it does lend itself to a certain skillset."

South takes longer to consider her words than she has for most of the conversation, eyes set on an empty spot of the wall the opposite direction to her brother.

"We drove each other nuts," she says, fingers drumming against the table. "Don't think you can grow up like that and not drive the other nuts, honestly. But I was the one who turned it into a fuckin' art."

There's the barest hint of a smirk on her face for a second before it disappears.

"Driving people nuts is an important skill," Stacia says. "Or so I've been told, and they can't all have been trying to flatter me so that I'd use my skills on their enemies instead of on them."

She takes a bite, chews thoughtfully.

"Of course, being able to annoy people who don't also love you means that you'd better be good enough at dodging to not get hit once you piss them off."

There's a flash of something indiscernible across South's face as a part of her questions if North even loves her, at this point, after everything, but it's gone in a second. That's not the point.

"That's why I got good at hand-to-hand," she says, then snorts and shakes her head. "Nah, actually, that's half a lie. I got into fights with people I pissed off but usually I threw the first punch, so..."

She shrugs. She's found it's usually better to pre-empt things like that, then you're the one in control of the encounter. North used to hate it, but he was always hot on her heels backing her up anyway, so it's not like he really discouraged the behaviour. Actions speak louder than words and all that.

She thinks, if she were more like him, this would be the point where she'd qualify that handling things the way she herself always has is ill-advised at best, but she's not like her brother at all. Either Stacia already knows better, or she can handle herself just fine anyway—being a fucking werewolf and all.

Stacia chuckles.

"Yeah, I mostly got good at surrounding myself with people who'd jump to defend me if someone started swinging," she says. "...While secretly getting good at hand-to-hand, just in case. Though I was an unholy terror as a little kid before I learned how to 'play nice'."

South has always had someone who jumps in to defend her whether she wants him to or not, and she almost comments to that effect, but she's said more about North than she'd planned to already, so...

"Hey, better to learn than leave it to everyone else, especially in the world you seem to come from," she says, instead. "I got my first black eye from a fight when I was... nine? I think? Which probably speaks for itself."

South's not a person who gives any illusions about who she is and always has been. She's always been quick to anger, she's always been a fighter, there's no shame in the admittance she was a violent little shit of a child.

"An older boy insisted on calling me 'Stacy' after I told him not to when I was in kindergarten," Stacia says. "My older siblings found me sitting on his back, holding his face against the sidewalk and telling him to lick it. I'm pretty sure the only reason I didn't get in trouble is because he was too embarrassed to tell anyone that the girl in frilly pastels kicked his ass without so much as getting dirt on her."

South snorts and laughs. "Fucking hell. I'm sure it makes me an irresponsible adult or whatever to say that's the way to do it, but yeah, sometimes that's the way to fuckin' do it. Unholy terror child or not, sure sounds like tiny you made the point you were trying to make."

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