trans_9 | Katzenjammer [Open]

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Katzenjammer [Open]

Aside from the comatose state she reached after Cassie finished her post-exorcism first-aid, sleep hasn't come easily to Eva since the possession. What little she's gotten has been interspersed with nightmares, so it's while all the Animorphs are sleeping that she slips out of Cassie's house and finds herself at the Drunken Dragon.

It's all too much. Too much going through her head and too much space alone in there. When she woke up it was because she was thrashing in her sleep and accidentally smacked her head into the bedpost. She found that she was clawing at her scalp while she dreamed.

She needs to feel a little bit out of control again, by her own doing, because that means less control that other people can take away from her. And she needs to dull the knowledge of how many bad memories she dredged up for Marco by going and getting herself possessed.

"Wine. Whatever you have. Keep it coming," she says, then, as if clarification is necessary, "I'm going to get drunk."

(( OOC: Open post but since Eva's going to be bemoaning the state of everything everywhere, please poke me first if you want to throw a character she's never met before at her. ))

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Eva figures she's dropped enough bombshells already without mentioning her and Marco killing Edriss. Even if Edriss entirely deserved whatever hell she was rotting in. She just takes another long drink instead. "Please keep believing that."

"We won," she states plainly. "The Andalites might have blown our planet to pieces. The Yeerks might have enslaved all of us. So winning was important." She takes another drink and buries her face in her hands.

"I'll try to always keep that," Katara said, and she looked a little troubled. She knew there had been times where the ship had actually made her doubt that part of herself, that others would say she was a fatality waiting to happen for her beliefs. She had to maintain what she thought to be the best thing for people involved.

So of course, now she was understanding what Eva had talked about. That sacrifice of destroying the Yeerk pools, even if inadvertently killing innocents, prevented the slaughter of MORE innocence the magnitude of an Ohm attack. Winning wasn't just winning, it was survival.

"That was a hard decision to make," Katara finally said, "and you made it because of what would happen to all of the people in your world. On some things, maybe I am naive: I don't think I've ever come across a situation like that. I think I'm finally beginning to understand what you've been telling me."

She took a drink of the wine, and look reflective on it. How much was a life worth, the longer she stayed on this ship and saw how devastating and thorough the Ohm were?

Eva doesn't speak for a few moments, face obscured behind hands and hair. She keeps taking deep breaths, each one in a vain attempt to settle her nerves. "It's war. You start to lose track of it after a while. I was pushing the frontline-" Marco. "To go through with it. It seemed like the best choice at the time."

Still, while she doesn't regret the decision, she knows she wouldn't have been as eager if she hadn't wanted to see every foul slug blown off the Earth. It's hard to untangle where pragmatic ruthlessness begins and vengefulness ends. She looks at Katara and can only see the youthfulness and idealism that her war burned out of people.

"Not to stomp on your innocence or anything," she says suddenly, then spills a little wine on her chin as she takes another swig. She wipes her face and puts on her scarred, broken half-grin. "And you know, at least I don't have to feel guilty about killing spiders anymore. Why bother with a single arachnid when I've helped kill so many thousand people?"

"I can see why you would think it though," Katara said. "I knew there was a reason you and I would butt head when it came to the subject of saving people vs the greater good, and at least now I have an idea. I can hold onto what I have because I haven't ever needed to make that decision before. I think you're right about something: it doesn't sound like a decision I want to make."

She took another sip of the wine, and paused to look down at it. What could people do, when thinking about the horrors of war, the ability to think and act ripped away, BUT drink to forget? Here she hadn't understood why Marco was angry, but she had tried and now it made sense: he'd hadn't been there to stop it. Even if he hadn't approved of how she stopped Eva, it had needed to happen and it wasn't him that did it.

"The problem with that," Katara said, "is that if you have the ability to kill once, the ability to kill again comes a little easier. To kill one spider one and while is one thing, but if you start to do it without thinking, when the spiders cease becoming spiders and start becoming pests, that is the time I'm scared about. I don't ever want to lose myself in that kind of thinking. It's why I try to keep myself understanding about things, why I look for other solutions."

"Well, I wasn't the only person to make that decision," she says, as if that qualifies any of it. "So clearly I only get a regular eternity in Hell, instead of the luxury suite."

Her lip bleeds a bit as she bites it again. "The fact that you went through a war with your ideals intact either says a lot for your luck or your homeworld."

"It does get easier. And that's terrifying. There's a poem, Plath, I think, maybe Sexton, something about how if I've killed one man why not two? Once you've reached one threshold why not another?" Perhaps if she can't keep her poetry straight she should slow down on the wine. After this next drink. "I can't say I'll never kill someone again, or set them up to die. I will, if there's a clear need for it. I'll do it without hesitating. And it's baffling how life goes on even when you know that about yourself."

Edited 2011-01-26 20:53 (UTC)

"When it comes to a situation like that, I can see where it wouldn't just be something you do by yourself. It would take a combined effort to take down the Yeerk pool. But I've heard of this hell before, Daimon keeps talking about, and I don't see why anyone would out you there. It's not a decision anyone really wants to make."

She sighed. "We did everything we could do, and I was lucky: I didn't have to make the decision to use the really powerful abilities for good or bad. I mean I have abilities, but they were nothing compared to Aang, and if you met him, you'd know exactly what I meant. He loved the world deeply enough that he didn't want to waste human life, and he was the one that ended the war."

Even now, tears spring to her eyes, and she wiped them quickly. There were some holes that simply couldn't be filled, no matter what you did.

"I know it gets easier, that's the problem." Katara took a drink. "I know its possible that there will come a time I have to make that decision, where a life has to be forfeit for others. I'd like to think that even then, I'll be able to know I can still try and work out something that doesn't have to end in killing. Solutions, concessions, they have to exist."

"Then take my word for it that there are plenty of reasons for me to doubt my invitation into Heaven." She drums her fingers over the table again, as if just remembering she's capable of that.

"You miss him. He sounds like a very brave person. I'd have liked to have met him, or meet him." She gently touches Katara's arm. "Maybe there are concessions in smaller affairs. Maybe even in some wars. I don't believe it's a guarantee."

Katar didn't quite know what to say to that, but then again she really didn't understand why they would make an afterlife of pain and suffering to begin with. It seemed too different from the things she'd been taught in her world.

Katara had a face change a little here: if there was one thing that made her change her demeanor completely, it was thinking about Aang. It had a way of making an enthisastic, idealistic girl into a brooding woman thinking of someone she thought she'd never see again.

"Yes, I do," she said. "I have a great boyfriend and I'd never want to hurt him, but Aang was and will always be my first love. Even the way we met was...well, nothing short of destiny. No one was ever quite like him."

She nodded. "I know. I think that was something I understood about you when you were calling me all those things. I started to get an idea of what war was and what it meant in your world."

Eva's got three plus decades of Catholic guilt, whether or not she still practices, and a pessimistic outlook on the future. It doesn't make for great faith in Heaven.

"How did you two meet? You're both young but I know trials and tribulations bring people closer together." Not that that helped any of the Animorphs, but death and depression tend to stop some relationships dead in their tracks.

She cringes. "Don't remind me. All that yelling was the sound of me humiliating myself."

Katara reddened a little. She had told the story before,and she supposed people might have gotten tired of it-not her. The moment she talked about it, you could see the change in her.

"That day I was out with my brother, and we were headed back when I got into an argument with him. I lost my temper and wound up cracking the ice around us: my powers were unfocused then, but still powerful in a way. We discovered we had released the Avatar, the only person who has the ability to bend all four elements and a protector of the world. There had been Avatars before him, and each of them, like us, would make a decision to kill a threat to our world. He managed to be frozen for a hundred years, during which war spread all over the other nations. It was his job to save our world and he did: without killing anyone but removing that person's bending."

She ducked her head down. "As we traveled together, I could see the good he inspired in people, the way he vowed to set things right. He gave me true hope that our worlds would be saved, that we could live in peace."

She brought her hand to her heart a moment. "He's the first person I fell in love with...and I miss him."

She shook her head, wiping her eyes. "It wasn't your fault though: it twisted what you were saying. Still, I know there's some truth in there. I know a part of me will still retain what I can from my world."

At least now she got what Eva was coming from.

She smiles as she listens. She can hear the affection and admiration in Katara's voice. "I can't imagine he had all this effect on you without you having an effect on him in return."

But still it baffles her how war could apparently rage all over nations and the solution could be so bloodless. It would never have worked that way back on her world, with Esplin in charge, with Edriss in her head. Even when the war ended the violence took years to put a lid on.

"Well, I don't mean just what I said about you. I think it's a commonly accepted rule that it's rude to power trip in public." It still frightens her how good it felt too, to have power, to be unafraid for those few minutes.

Katara looked a little more haunted though. "The ship took him, before it likely took both of us. It turns out Aang has been keeping people on this ship safe, particularly when an entity known as the Nightmare King start terrorizing people on the ship. Eventually we released Aang, and beat that King. Aang is older than when I knew him...but it could never keep him. He's been here and back twice."

It was something she didn't like to think about, Aang alone by himself in the pods, waiting for a day to be awakened. Worse still was the idea that the ship could never just keep him around. Just thinking about it put her stomach in knots.

She giggled here. "I guess that was why people were so overwhelmed by the demon spirit. I think there's a little of that in everyone, and this demon brings it out. In a way, you can't help power tripping a little bit. I don't even know what would happen if it would have invaded me: being a waterbender would have definitely helped it."

"Planet Meatball's playing tug-of-war with your heart," she says gently. "At least you know he's on the ship. You can be there for him when he wakes, and if he's this brave, understand young man you're telling me about, I'm sure that you have a boyfriend now will be a minor contention at best. If he's woken before, that's a much better track record than everyone else in those pods."

She fake shudders. "Oh, don't even tempt fate with that idea. At least all I could do was throw fireballs and scream like a harpy. I heard it possessed an elf wizard too, and that that was quite the pain in the ass."

Katara's consolation helps a little, but Eva can't help but feel ashamed to have broadcast how weak and helpless she feels to a wider audience.

She sighed. "You better believe it. It's not something I talk abut much, but there were days I just felt like a robot: I shut down my feelings, giving smiles and looking happy when I didn't feel like it much. I don't really get why Stacy takes away or brings someone back on the ship, but that time was pretty hard. If he were to be brought back now..."

Well. She hadn't really thought about it, the idea seemed so unlikely. When she thought about it though, the ship had brought back Sokka, Zuko and Mai, it wasn't a stretch it might bring back Aang.

And the idea made her wonder what would happen with her and Matt.

She shook her head out of it and laughed. "I don't know if screaming was the accurate word for it. The demon sounded a lot like Daimon when he's getting all agitated. If a magic elf got possessed first, I'm surprised more things weren't destroyed."

In any case, she didn't blame Eva: it hadn't been fair what happened to her anyway.

She nods. She understands very well how that feels. Katara keeping up the happy facade is not so different from her own tactics of snark and light-heartedness to keep herself from feeling or showing the full force of her emotions. "It's difficult, to be separated. But at least he's safe. A little snotbath never killed anyone," she says, trying her best to comfort Katara. "If he were to be brought back now, you two would find a way to work it out. Believe an old married woman, there are far more complicated situations that untangle themselves than your current one."

"Yeah," Katara said, trying to make herself feel a little better about that. It would at least help if there was someway to see him, make sure that he was at least comfortable.

As far what would happen if he were brought back, Katara just didn't know. "He wouldn't take it well, I know that. In the event that happened, I think I'd have to-"

And she was suddenly cut short. Apparently, the teleportation (http://community.livejournal.com/trans_pilgrims/511392.html?thread=5983904#t5983904) spell. One minute she was talking to Eva, the next she was suddenly hanging from one of the sconces.

"Eva! I don't know how I got here, but please get me down from heeeeere!"

"What on Earth-" Oh, Eva is not nearly sober enough for this. Thankfully the sconces aren't too terribly high up, so she gets up, moves her barstool over to under Katara and gets up on it, doing her best not to sway. "Hold on to the sconce so if I tip over you don't go down too. Has anything radioactive bitten you lately?"

Yes, random, bewildering teleportation powers still merit gentle sarcasm. She unhooks Katara's clothes and takes her in her arms, then sets her down on the floor. Thankfully Katara's not a terribly big person. Eva gets off the barstool. "Are you alright?"

Katara held on until Eva had the chair under her, then slowly dropped. She was out of breath, barely tipsy and completely confused. It was bad enough when she started to randomly get tired from before, why was she suddenly one place and then another?

She got down quickly, shaking her head. "I don't think anything bit me, and I really don't think I ever did anything to have this happen! What the heck is going on?"

"If I knew you'd be the first to know." She leans against the stool. "I didn't notice anyone else doing it. Should we get you to the Med Bay?"

What is the appropriate response to random acts of teleportation, anyway? It's not like it shows up in the average survival handbook.

Katara climbed down, taking a deep breath, her hair starting to settle from its standing on end. "No, that's ok, I can get to med bay later. Heck, maybe I should ask someone in the magical department to see if they'd know how something like this happens."

She shook her head. "Well, now we both feel pretty embarrassed now."

"Please. Demonic possession versus teleportation? I win hands down." She still looks concerned, but Katara's right. Magic department's probably the way to go.

"Oh I wasn't competing!" Katara wouldn't dare. "I mean now I get to feel really awkward. You definitely have a reason to be drinking."

She paused. "Besides, I cared more about you getting un-possessed again. It was bad enough this happened, but I at least am glad this ended without anything bad. There are always ways to train against this kind of possession."

Eva laughs a bit. She was joking. It doesn't entirely put her at ease, though, because who knows when Katara will teleport next, or into what. Uncertainty doesn't really gel with her. "Well, hopefully they teach nightclasses in that, then."

She nodded, looking at her hands. She really hoped this wasn't a permanent thing, whatever this was. She did however take another anxious sip of the wine.

"I've had a few mind exercising situations I've had to deal with," Katara said. "Specifically the Nightmare King situation. I know there will be people willing to teach how to defend yourself in that situation."

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Katzenjammer [Open]

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