[Josée's Note: So, I returned to Resurgence LARP after something of an absence! And...NPCing, I created the very first player kill! Yay! What wasn't so "yay" was that that character was Nat! Cue Ali desperately searching for a way to bring back the man she loved, and growing more and more desolate as each option crumbled. So...here is Ali's personal aftermath.]
[Note: Some Bad Language]
Alone Again
She shouldn't have been walking home alone.
She had offered Nat a place to sleep; a place to stay when needed. She shouldn't have been walking home alone. Her stomach was in tight, twisting knots, her mind replaying the words of her colleague as he broke the news of Nat's death to her. Death was not unknown to Ali, nor did it scare her anymore...but...this was Nat. This was the one man she had felt something stronger than comradeship for in her entire life. This was the one man she had broken her cardinal rule for; "Never get attached".
She felt numb. She wanted to feel something. Pain, anger, sadness...anything. Anything was better than this empty, numbing void she felt. Each step felt heavier than it ever had before; each sound seemed distant and inconsequential. Several times, she was woken from her daze by honking horns as motorists yelled warnings and obscenities at her for walking out into the road without noticing their approach, all met with a blank silence from the woman.
With every step she took bringing her closer to her flat, she felt dread rise in her stomach. This place...this sanctuary of hers...had been shared with Nat in recent days. She didn't know how she would handle such reminders of him when the news of his passing was so fresh and raw. In the military, such things were dealt with quickly; the bunk would be empty for a day or two, before a fresh face made it their own. The higher-ups dealt with the removal and gathering of personal effects and such...there would be none of that here.
Her courage failing her, she ducked into one of the nightclubs she had worked in, before everything had kicked off and she had disappeared for a while. Dutch Courage. That would help.
"That you, Ali?" She heard a familiar voice ask.
"Yeah." She heard herself reply, faintly.
"Almost didn't recognise you. Fancy dress party?" Asked the barman, as he walked over to stand opposite her across the bar.
"Something like that."
"You what, an angel or summat?" He asked, curiously.
"Apparently."
"Need a halo." The barman grinned. "Then you'll look more convincing."
"Hah." She replied, with a slight hint of disinterest.
"What's up, love?" He asked. "You seem off...?"
Ali paused, unable to bring herself to say the words, almost as if saying them would make them more truthful. "I...had a rough day." She faltered, thinking she had just made the understatement of the year.
"Ah. want to talk about it?" The gentleman offered.
"No." She replied, swiftly and firmer than intended. "...No. Thank you. I just..." She sighed. "I just need a drink and...time. Time to...to..." She took a deep breath and ran her hands across her face. "...to just...be."
The bartender nodded sympathetically. "Your usual, then?" He asked, softly.
"Stronger. Much stronger." She emphasised. "And plenty of it. I'm drinking on a friend's behalf, too." She added, an ironic, hollow laugh escaping her instinctively.
The bartender grinned. "They given up the hard stuff?" He asked.
"You could say that." She replied, her voice once more quietening. The bartender passed her two shots of some kind of strong spirit, and she handed over her cash. Nodding her thanks, she moved to a quiet, secluded table; not difficult given the night was incredibly young.
She leaned back in her seat, and felt the numbness subside slightly, a well of pain and sorrow filling the small gap it had allowed to form in the pit of her stomach. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, chewing on the inside of her cheek. Slowly she opened her eyes once more, and focussed on the glass in front of her. "You stupid man." She said, softly, directing her words at the glass. "If you really did attack first...you...you stupid man." She repeated. "If you hadn't...if you hadn't..." She continued, her teeth gritting as she emphasised, feeling the anger and pain rise, "...you'd still be here. You'd be here, with me...after all that time writing when we were apart..." She resisted the urge to bang her fist on the table. She felt the emotion rise and swell in her throat and she took a deep, unsteady breath, fighting the outpouring of emotions that threatened to break the dam of her expressionless features. Anger wasn't going to bring him back. Anger wasn't going to make her feel any better. Nor did she want to think that all she had done following his death was blame him for all that had happened. Then again...she didn't want to break down in the club. That would be hard to explain and harder for her ego to deal with. She'd do that in private.
Sighing, she picked up the first glass and the aroma caught her. Rum. Straight. She raised the glass, raised her eyebrows and shrugged. "This one's to you, Nat." She spoke aloud, to the world in general, before knocking it back. She shuddered. It was her fault for ordering some of the stronger stuff, she gathered. "And this one's for us sods who have to carry on going." She sighed, as she picked up the second and downed that also. Her lips thinned as her mind thought to the future. Nat had championed her to Kitiara and the others who had treated her so poorly in the past. He had mentioned threatening Little Miss Mouthy when she had got vicious about her...he had supported her when she had felt at her lowest and now...he...
He was gone.
Her last words to him had been so pointed; marking him due to his previous errors, without acknowledging the effort he had put in to making things right. That thought stung. Frontier had mentioned that he had been unable to speak by the time he died, so there was no message; no last words...and no closure from those words. The world was going to once more feel imposing and wrong. She would begin to feel like an outsider once more...and she feared that this time, she might be outcast for good. Nat, whether he realised it or not, had been her one link to her humanity; her anchor to who she was, and why she had chosen to walk the path of the Lumenatae. Without him, she feared that her new nature; her chosen path, would begin to erode away at the person she had been, and cause her to lose herself.
With reluctance she stood up, the edges of her vision slightly unfocussed. She nodded to the bartender as she left and continued towards the flat.
When she reached the door, she felt her nerves rise and rise. She didn't want to see inside. She didn't want to be reminded of what she had lost. Taking a shuddering breath, she turned the key in the lock, and stepped through the door.
The absence of imps, firstly, made an impression. For a while there had been incursions by a variety of imps, but most recently Barty, Simpkin and Queazle had been popping in and out. They were Nat's imps, who ran a variety of tasks for him, and...though Ali would never have admitted it to Nat, she had grown somewhat fond of the small, squeaky voiced, easily distracted "shiny hunters". Losing Nat, she suddenly realised, meant that those three had, most likely, returned to the Djinn realm when they realised their contract had suddenly ended. She frowned. She knew Nat had treated them far more kindly than some would have, and thinking of them in service to another, for some reason, sat uncomfortably with Ali. She made a vow to herself. She would seek out a Djinn and make a deal for the three of them. If nothing else, at least they would provide her with some sort of link to Nat.
The second thing she spotted was the two empty wine glasses and the half a bottle of wine that stood upon the table, the chairs left by she and Nat as if they were going to return and continue the conversation momentarily. She smiled sadly. At least they had had a chance to sit and just be together; no crazy Lumenatae or Djinn crap to deal with...just the two of them, together, enjoying the company.
As she walked in, what caught her emotions the most was the makeshift bed on the sofa that neither of them had cleared away, just presuming it would be needed for the foreseeable future. Pressing her fingertips to her mouth as she bit her lip, she felt all of the sadness, hurt, anger, regret and loss swell up once more, and she tasted the salty tears that had finally escaped her. It were as if a champagne bottle had been shaken and then uncorked; the emotions swelled and swelled, and as they did, the tears fell thicker and faster. Between sobs, she choked in air, not even trying to keep quiet. The grief was too great for her to try and silence herself. This was it. Once again, she was alone, and the one person she had let get beneath her hardened shell was gone. She had gone to the Lumenatae, and then the Djinn, to try and find a way to make it not so...and had found nothing but dead ends. Feeling her legs give way, she crumpled to the floor. She had been prepared to make any deal, any deal if it had meant bringing him back; if it had given her but a few moments more with him.
The grief tore through her, like a hurricane through a small village, decimating everything in its path. She had lost friends, so many friends, during her time in the armed forces. She had seen some of them dead before her eyes only that morning...and yet...the loss of Nat; this one man...cut deeper than all of those losses combined. Her anguished sobs echoed through the flat. Frontier had been unable to get close enough to Nat's body to bring him home, and Ali had made a point of memorising the route he had described to her. She would return the following day. She would find him. She couldn't let him lay out in the woods. She couldn't let that be his final resting place. Amidst the pain and the loss coursing through her body, there was determination and vengeance searing through her blood. She would find his imps and take them in. She would find his body and bring him home. And she would find the UKDF and make them pay for his death. She had agreed to leave the Wild Magic to their own devices? Fine by her. The UKDF? Well, that was something different entirely.
Her despairing sobs began to fade, and her eyes burned with anger, hate and vengeance. Standing up, she looked at her shining, glowing hands. "They won't get away with it." She spat, spitefully, her hands balling into fists. "It doesn't end here. I won't let it end here." She continued, standing tall, her military training coming to the forefront once more. "A soldier I was, a soldier I will be." She affirmed. Scowling, she continued "NDF, Lumenatae, whatever. It doesn't matter anymore. Fuck the labels, fuck the names. None of it matters anymore. I am Ali Greenwood, and UKDF? Oh," She grinned, an almost manic edge to her smile as she spoke to the room in general. "Oh yes, I am fucking coming for you. All of you." She picked up the leftover wine and unscrewed the top. Raising it, she nodded decisively, raising her eyes to the ceiling. "Nat..." she called, "...watch my back."
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