trans_9 | Alcohol, the alternative to feeling like myself

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Alcohol, the alternative to feeling like myself

The world was busy, and so fast. Always moving faster then Orc could move, or think. It seemed like life was passing in the slow solid blinks of his beady little eyes.

Ever since Howard's death he didn't feel as compelled to be useful. To take care of himself. What was the point really? They were all going to die sooner or later. And it's not like he deserved that second chance Howard was always going on about.

Howard...how long had it been? Between the drinking and Stacy's own peculiar grasp of time he had lost track.

But it didn't matter. All that mattered was forgetting. Forgetting where he was, forgetting what he was. Forgetting about Howard, Betty, home.

And so he kept drinking. And he kept moving. To stay in one place for too long risked trouble. People finding him, feeling bad for him. They were just being nice. But he didn't deserve nice. Not after what he'd done.

The city was perfect for this because there was so much of it. He didn't move fast, and he got tired easily. But he had plucked the beertree clean and drug a cooler with him. One of Howard's last gifts. Maybe Howard had more beer in the warehouse...he would have to stop there and see.

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Right now would have been a moment for Kaya to take off. Granted, she was sure that Orc's loyalties were not with the Daligig, but even she knew that she needed to make herself scarce. This didn't stop her from moving closer to Orc though.

"You don't look ok," she said, leaning forward to inspect him. She already had an idea of what he had been doing the last few days. "Hung over?"

Oh, she'd been there before.

A rancid burp was her answer and he groaned with the fresh wave of sickness that came with it. How much longer would he have to wait before he could wash all of this out of his mind with the bottles and cans in his cooler? The wait was almost as bad as the hangover.

"Sucks."

She really didn't like enabling this kind of thing, but she remembered how Howard had reacted when she talked about trying to make Orc better. If there was one thing she at least wanted to do since Howard was no longer with them.

So she was already hovering over him, water in hand.

"If you want, I can at least help you feel a little better. Will you let me?"

Orc looked puzzled at first, and groaned again nodding gently hanging his head in a fresh mix of shame and sickness. His stomach churned freshly. People were too nice sometimes. Some people were just too nice for how cruel the world was.

"Ok."

She took a breath, then removed the stopper on her waterskin and let some of the water out. Kaya made sure it didn't fall to the ground but streamed it in an arc and then placed it over Orc's pressure points. It would at least make it so he would feel better.

"What are you doing anyway?"

Orc's rock covered body offered little resistance to the flow of water, the cracks accommodating it but masking the pressure points underneath making it a little more difficult then it would normally be.

"Throwing up?" He offered unsure of her question. The water felt good though. He relaxed a little feeling the heat of his self imposed sickness fade.

He might have been hard to reach but Kaya was an exceptional waterbender and even better at manipulating pressure points thanks to Sheeana. By the time she was done, he'd be feeling much better.

"I gathered that much," she said dryly. "But collapsed here, in a bathroom? You can do better than this."

As the pressures and illness was drawn from his body his head began to clear, unpleasantly so. Suddenly all the things he was trying to forget and not feel were rushing back into his awareness and it was making him hurt in a different way.

"I usually throw up wherever I'm walking." He pointed out distracted by his thoughts.

Kaya did her best to help him up. One would think she wouldn't be up to the task considering what Orc looked like, but of course most people tended to underestimate exactly how strong Kaya was. She had him up momentarily.

"Maybe you ought to cut out a little bit of that drinking," Kaya said, "at least enough so you can get cleaned up a little bit. You never know who's watching, after all."

As strong as she was, he still had to co-operate. After all he was incredibly dense and thick, and unwilling. The minute she mentioned not drinking he sat down again but the second part of what she said confused him.

"Who?"

Kaya had pretty much expected Orc not to react happily to the not drinking scenario: Howard has plainly said it was a stupid idea and wanted no part in it, and Kaya had to concede to that at the time. It was however, concern to her that beer was essentially Orc's carrot on a stick.

"Anyone, but specifically? Someone who's use it to get you to do things for them. It's not only good guys on the ship, you know."

Orc looked at the floor and mumbled "Yeah, I know."

But what he meant was more that he was one of those bad guys on the ship.

"I'll be fine." He muttered "Don't worry about it." An automatic response, and a lie. He knew he wouldn't be fine. He couldn't be fine. Because if he was fine that made it alright and nothing that had happened in Orc's life since FAYZ was alright.

Kaya would have never gone so far as to call Orc a goodguy. Granted, she knew nothing about his dark past, but from what she could tell, he honestly did the best he could just to get by on the ship. There was no denying how much this worried her.

"Of course I'm worried. When you lose someone that was your friend that long, who looks out for you all the time, it does something to you. It does it to me every single time."

That caught his attention. Orc lifted his gaze for a minute to examine her. It was hard for his eyes to focus in the dark but clearing up his hangover made it easier.

"How many times has it happened?"

"Too many times to remember," was Kaya's reply, and really, it was true. "And a lot of them were friends I made on the ship too. It's never easy when they go, but that doesn't mean you have to go through it alone."

And they could start by getting out of the creepy bathroom.

Orc didn't seem to agree on the second part. He was content to sit and ponder her words. But pondering anything for Orc took some time.

"Did you know Howard?"

Kaya avoided these bathrooms as much as she could. It was one of the reasons that she was glad there was a bathroom in the hotel. The less Stacy could spy on her, particularly when it came to something private like using the bathroom.

"Yes. We've talked a few times, he and I both worked in med bay, and we were forced to go on a date during GLADOS's stupid experiment. We had fun though. When I found out he died, it hurt pretty bad."

Orc made a sound like a weak raspy laugh when Kaya mentioned being forced on a date with Howard but sighed miserably when she went back to how bad it hurt knowing he was gone.

"He deserved better. He wasn't a good person...but he wasn't as bad as he seemed."

"I know." Kaya looked down at her hands. "For someone who cared about himself and didn't want to fight, he still did the best that he could to survive. And that date was actually really fun."

She wiped her eyes though, already feeling them mist.

"I wish I'd been able see him before he went."

Orc looked like he was thinking hard, instinctively he wanted to sooth her. But he didn't know how.

"But he woulda been all sick and beat up..."

"I wouldn't have cared about that," Kaya told him. "I told you that I work in med bay. I deal with people like that and worse all of the time. If it meant talking to him one last time, I don't care."

She sighed. "And then I was concerned about you too."

Orc was about to comment that Howard probably wouldn't have liked being seen in such a state. Then she startled him with that comment.

"Me?" It puzzled him to imagine anyone worrying about him.

"Of course you! Howard was your best friend, and he looked after you all the time. Of all the people that were going to be affected by him dying, you're on the top of the list. So of course I'm worried about you."

She was as worried about him as she would be for Howard, after all.

Her explanation did not clear things up for him. If anything it just made things more difficult to process. "But you don't know me." As if that was the only reason anyone would help anyone.

"Howard told me a little bit about you, but I'll admit it: I don't know as much as I'd like to. I'll admit something else too: the last time we spoke about you, it was an argument. I was asking Howard if there was a way to wean you from beer. It may have been a fight, but if there was anything I understood from it, it was how much Howard cared about you."

She sighed. "And because of that, I want to know more about you, look after you if you'll let me."

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