(no subject)

[omniavincit]

Passengers: William & Claire + potential guests?? (if your char would be in the vicinity, feel free to start a new thread with either one of them)
Location: The Mysterious and Sexy Warden Command
Date: May 15th
Summary: Drinking on the job.
Warnings: William is a mean drunk (I know, crazy)



The theater in warden command is black, save for the light leaking from the imperfectly closed minibar—enough to trace the outline of each seat, reveal a dark shape occupying the end of the row. William hasn't been drunk in who knows how long—since he was a fucking pirate, maybe, and the world a rolling deck—but he's methodical about it, taking slow, regular pulls from the whiskey bottle.

He's read the file by now. CommLink balanced on his leg, he flicks the words up and down the screen. He's not so far gone he can't make out the names: Sylvia, Hunter, Jeane Jeane Jeane. He wonders—all he'll ever be able to do—what Harry thought when he was served up William's family, whether he was surprised or appalled or just didn't care. He thinks of inmates on the Barge, how willing some of them had been to wring every drop of tragedy from their lives.

He takes another drink and starts over. He'll stop when the words blur.

Comments

[blackclad]

For fairly obvious reasons, Luke doesn't drink (much) any more, but he has plenty of experience with the worst sort of rotgut that can be begged, borrowed, or stolen on Tatooine. There's not much to do out on the edge of nowhere but drink, drive, shoot, or some mix of the three.

"Company?"

[omniavincit]

It's not the bottle William thinks to hide but the CommLink—jabbing at a button to black out the screen, twisting in his seat as he jams the device into a pocket on the second try. His movements not sloppy but ill-considered. He's not much more than an impression in the paltry light: messy hair and glazed eyes.

“That a threat?” His voice is soft, the words caving to the rhythm of a drawl.

[blackclad]

"No?" Luke blinks in surprise and shifts his weight from one foot to the other. He looks a bit embarrassed now, running a(n ungloved) hand through his hair.

"Honest question. If you want company, or not."

[omniavincit]

There's a pause as William searches his feelings, a process akin, in his current state, to rummaging through a junk drawer. He doesn't know this guy. Does he know this guy?

“What the hell.” Some dark stranger. Sure. Still: William gives him a hard look. “Bar's over there,” he says, neglecting to indicate where 'there' is. “No shitting on inmates.”

[blackclad]

"I wouldn't dream of it." Whenever Luke feels ill about someone, he looks at his catty, bratty emotions, examines them, and then releases them into the Force. Or at least, he tries to do that and sometimes fails.

"You want anything while I'm up?" He's going to get himself a glass of something fruit-y, but it's no trouble to bring back a dish of bar nibblies or whatever looks good. (Even if William doesn't ask, he's going to bring a bit of food.)

[omniavincit]

It's hard to gauge the sincerity of that remark—of any of it, really. He shakes his head no to the question, almost reflexive, and turns back around in his chair. “You don't have to wait on me.” There's no sneering undertone, no poisonous implication. If this is a compulsion—making himself of use—the other man's excused from it.

William sags in his seat and takes a drink.

[blackclad]

"Never thought I had to, but I strongly suspect that if I didn't offer, my Aunt's spirit would appear and cuff me upside the head." Luke slides into a seat nearby and puts the bowl of nibbly things on the table. "I'm Luke."

If the other man looks to be the sort to shake hands, he'll do it, but otherwise he's perfectly happy to just sip his drink.

[omniavincit]

The mood he's in—melancholic, struggling to absorb and then stomach the file's textbook-dry deaths—William's chastened by the mention of yet another dead relative, and for an instant his expression pinches in drunken dismay. “You're with Theon,” he says, softening a little. He glances down as though expecting to find the CommLink still balanced on his leg. “I was gonna talk to you.”

No handshake or name, apparently. The snacks are disregarded as well, though whatever Luke's drinking garners some bemused consideration.

[blackclad]

What? He didn't even put an umbrella in it. There might be a wedge of something citrus on the rim, because he is never going to turn down fruit in space. Anything that's not a potato-flavoured ration bar is great. (Anything. He has eaten a roast mynock and his only complaint was that it needed more hot sauce.)

"I'm here to listen."

[omniavincit]

Ugh. Though his outward reaction is distant, minimal—a twitch of a brow—William entertains a vivid fantasy of sinking further and further in his seat until he slides to the floor and crawls out on his hands and knees. He does no such thing, instead inclines his head toward the other man's concoction. “May I?”

Regardless of the response, he follows up with, casual as anything: “When're you from?” Hard to tell if the words are slurred or that's his accent.

[blackclad]

Luke nods and offers up his drink. It's sweet and tart, likely something cranberry-ish, but he couldn't tell you what it is; none of the food here makes much sense. Where's the papple? The joganfruit?

"Four ABY, after Yavin." It's not helpful, is it?

[omniavincit]

After a second of borderline mutinous eye contact, William takes a swallow, mouth pulling in a grimace at the sweetness. He can almost feel it sinking into his teeth. “Not for me,” he says, passing the glass back a little too quickly—but it's neutral, his suspicion that the stranger had mixed up an alcohol-free cocktail in a bid to pump William for information laid to rest.

He stares blankly at the answer, though it's not long before his mind begins to roil with implications. “Who's Yavin?” he asks, a note of pre-emptory regret in his voice. He better not have just asked this guy to share the good word about his fucking savior.

[blackclad]

"Not a who, but a what. A place where there was a battle and the Empire, which had stood for a little over twenty years, it fell." He takes the drink back, sips from it, and then ruefully continues.

"Calendars are a mess. The Empire reset it to zero, then the Battle of Yavin did it again."

[omniavincit]

William drinks as well—to get the cloying aftertaste out of his mouth, frankly. His scrutiny doesn't let up, but shifts from mistrust to something involuntary, compulsive. “Short empire,” he observes, flippant. The details slow to wash back over him—the man's dead aunt, his black clothes and the tone of his voice.

“But I bet it didn't feel that way.”

[blackclad]

"No, it'd been there all my life, even if they didn't care about the dirtball I grew up on." Luke is uncomfortably aware that the start of the new Imperial calendar aligned with his birthday.

"But, even before that, the Senate-That-Was, they couldn't be bothered with Tatooine. We weren't a part of it, and their rules were useless in Hutt space."

up for whoever!

[shiftedshape]

Loki is actually rather proud of his self-restraint as far as the Command minibar goes, though this is in part due to the likely pointlessness of his trying to get drunk off a bar that is mini. Then again, he hasn't checked. Maybe there's Asgardian spirits in there. He hasn't had a drink from the minibar since Lucifer offered a sympathetic ear and a bottle of whiskey a couple months ago, and it hadn't had too much of an effect, he thinks.

Finding these two drinking is surprising in and of itself, not to mention together. The fact that he wasn't the first to drown his sorrows in drink is yet another shock. Until he thinks back on the past couple days and puts two and two together.

Ah. This does not bode well for any of them.

Loki takes a seat, legs stretching out in front of him. He laces his fingers together in his lap and he clears his throat politely.

"I take it the permanent pairings are off to a promising start?"

[nineteenfortyfive]

Ah. Loki. Funny that he comes in, as Claire would consider him another person she knows far too intimately, now. It's not all terrible. She likes Loki a lot, and that's why she offers him her glass. She just recently topped it off. She is a generous drinker.

"These files are a hell of a read," she says. And then she squints at Loki. "I think you'd need a whole distillery to get drunk."

Doctor's orders? She shrugs.

[shiftedshape]

He takes a drink and passes the glass back as he swallows. "Mm, perhaps not that much. But I suppose I'll save up just in case."

Curiosity is his bigger vice, anyway.

"I never saw my own, but I imagine it was worse. Longer, certainly." Not that it's a competition. "Anything in particular that got you drinking?"

[nineteenfortyfive]

"Well, I do take it you're older than nineteen," she remarks, but she knows he's much older. Claire sighs, not wanting to divulge too much of Jason's history, but clearly having a hard time swallowing it.

"Which to choose? The manner of his death, the red flags along the way, the authority figures that... are bloody masked vigilantes."

[shiftedshape]

"Several centuries past that, yes."

Loki nods along, fingers drumming against his thigh thoughtfully. "Are you simply overwhelmed by it all or having second thoughts?"

[nineteenfortyfive]

Centuries and he still looks younger than her. She scoffs. Life is unfair, truly. His question makes her expression fall into a sad frown, eyes drifting down to her hands.

"No second thoughts. It's just--tragic. I'd hate to be yet another figure of authority in his life to fail him. We're both facing death if this doesn't work out." Her own death, maybe not that terrible if it's both her and Jamie as that obituary said, but Jason--too young to be lost.

"I knew that, going into this whole thing. It's just very real, now."

🥃🍻🥂🍸

[nineteenfortyfive]

Claire's a little slower to make her way to warden command. She reads the file completely sober, like a researcher looking for answers to a question. She doesn't know what question the information answers, but she does know her stomach is churning by the end of it. A crowbar. She feels like she's been hit in the gut with one, and when she realizes another soul is in the theater, Claire comes to sit delicately beside William. Proper, until she seems to deflate and meld into the back of the chair.

"What are we drinking?"

Her voice is a little lower, a little heavier.

😵‍💫

[omniavincit]

William looks neither pleased nor displeased to see her—there's a flash of concern and then it's gone, swallowed up in the seeming inevitability of the moment. He studies her face as if pondering a headstone, then drops his gaze to his Commlink. Finishes his sentence. There's something like a timeline laid out on it, a succession of dates spanning the '80s to 2015.

With a minute shrug, he passes over the bottle. “Whiskey. With an e.” It's on his breath and in the look he gives her, bright and unfocused. “How old's he? Jason.”

🤢🤠

[nineteenfortyfive]

She'll take it. Claire sits a little more upright to take a healthy swig from the bottle, then goes right back into her slouch as she feels the burn travel down to her stomach. The bottle rests on the arm separating their seats, Claire's hand remaining at the base to keep it steady. That's not going into a cup holder. One of them will want it again in a second, anyway.

"Nineteen," she breathes out. Nineteen and already with a telephone book's worth of people that have abandoned him in one way or another, be it by neglect or death. She's heartbroken for him, and that's not even the worst of what she read. Claire studies William's face for a long moment, then nods to his CommLink. "Why you and Travis?"

[omniavincit]

He's frowning—jaw tight, face in a half-wince. He's never known what to make of young inmates, the thought that the scales could be decisively tipped before someone hit their twenties. Following her nod he dims the CommLink's screen with the press of a button. “I didn't expect to be first.” Some days he hadn't thought it would happen at all—a year, two of helping where he could, stepping in when an inmate needed it. Taking wardens to task.

He hesitates, some of the old suspicion welling up. Gaze locked on the bottle, her fingers wrapped around it. He and Travis have plenty in common: children and blood-steeped pasts, lives founded in fiction. He's not sure whether he doesn't trust her with it—the park, her—or if he wants her to put it together on her own.

“When my warden—” A pause. He continues almost delicately, the words well enunciated and emotionless. “When it became clear that I was nothing to him, we were nothing to each other, I got copies of my file and gave them to other people. I could see Travis doing that. He wants this. He wants to believe there are good people.

“Not,” he adds, grimly reaching for the bottle, “that I make any claims. What were you like at nineteen?”

[nineteenfortyfive]

Sometimes she forgets he was once an inmate, too. The reminder that he once was in that position, what it entailed that he was there at all--and the fact that he's now a warden despite the words I was nothing to him would sober her up if she were drunk already.

"Travis won't be nothing to you," she says with too much certainty. Blame the simulation and the bits and pieces that linger. "If he wants this, and he's willing to do the work, then he has the right warden to guide him along the way."

She can't remember complimenting him to his face before. Claire folds her hands on her lap, fiddling with that gold band on her ring finger.

"At nineteen, I..." Wasn't some sidekick vigilante to some rich man with some bat persona. Claire purses her lips. "I was married to a man twelve years my senior. I'd always been on the move. Not wild, but... free. As much as one could be, back then, and I loved it. But I thought that surely as the wife of a professor, I'd be content to settle down. Pop out a few children. I had no idea what would truly bring me happiness. I had no idea who I was."

And there was Jason Todd, life cut short before he could even think to consider that. Claire sighs.

"Are you the sort that believes everything happens for a reason?"