[PRP] Collateral Damage

[TawnyAngel]

Something had happened to Sera, she hadn't been too forthcoming with the details but it must have been pretty bad for her to put off meeting for this long. When she had at last contacted him asking if he wanted to meet at the usual place it had taken a couple of days for him to sort out having the evening off, and the next morning too just in case drowning sorrows was going to occur.

It was already dark by the time Red touched down outside the bar and Aulus was very glad of his thick coat, hat, and gloves; even with them he was feeling the bite of the cold from the long flight as he recalled Red and headed inside.

Once he'd removed his gloves and coat Aulus pushed up the sleeve of his sweater so that he could reach the screen on his arm and type out a message to Sera. //I'm here, where are you up to?// He didn't see her by the bar but she could already have taken a table or something.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

'Pretty bad' was rather an understatement, and was exactly how she felt on the way to the bar. She'd felt bad enough for canceling on Kurt so suddenly, doubly so when she couldn't even explain to him or give him any reason why she'd canceled, why she hadn't rescheduled in so long... So now that he'd finally made time to meet up with her, the brunette took great pains to be ready early and to arrive early, because like hell she was going to show up late and feel even worse about that.

Luna had ensured she did indeed arrive early - and remained quite warm and cozy on the way there - and when her phone buzzed, Sera read the message and turned around in her seat. She had indeed found a booth to sit in and had promptly slouched down in it - and realized now that maybe she shouldn't have, because he obviously hadn't seen her - and her pale green eyes scanned the entryway for barely any time at all before they focused in on him and, rather than text him back, she simply lifted her hand - her real hand - to wave and get his attention so he knew where she was sitting.  

[TawnyAngel]

Ah, there she was. Aulus closed the screen again and headed over to Sera, waving in turn as he approached. "Hi," he said as he sat down opposite her in the booth. He had considered on his way here what to say, how to greet her. 'So what awful s**t happened?' wasn't right but he couldn't exactly have cheerfully said 'So how are you?' either. Happily the way they'd found one another gave him something reasonable to open with, which was; "Didn't see you there, which you probably gathered. Drink?" Alcohol had to be a good way to start, they pretty much always drank when they met up anyway and if bad s**t had happened then it was needed all the more.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Please," the brunette said emphatically, her demeanor brightening just a tad at the prospect of alcohol. She'd entertained the thought of getting herself a glass when she'd arrived just for want of something strong to drown all the terrible memories she'd no doubt dredge up later, but figured it better to wait until her company arrived. Thankfully she didn't have to wait too long. "Anything's fine to start with, I think."  

[TawnyAngel]

"Right, back in a bit then," Aulus nodded, taking a moment to dump his hat along with his coat and gloves in the booth before heading to the bar. Getting served seldom took him long anywhere but here it was quicker still because most of the bar staff recognised him by now; they knew he wasn't trouble even if he looked like it, and that he tipped decently. Always be polite to the people giving you alcohol.

A cocktail seemed like a good place to start and as they had two for ones on Aulus got four, two espresso martinis and two daiquiris. "Here," he said as he returned to the table and set them down. "Mix and match or have both of one, I like both." He would definitely have worried about buying potentially 'girly' cocktails once upon a time but a lot of s**t had happened since then to give him some perspective. Anyway if any b*****d looked at him funny he could break their arm just by squeezing, it was a pretty reassuring thing to know.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Sera waited patiently - or as patiently as possible, given her current state of mind - until Kurt returned. When he did, she reached out without hesitation for one of the daiquiris, but hesitated a bit over the espresso martinis before finally taking one of those as well. Kurt liked both, and he did say she could mix and match, so mix and match she did. "Thanks," she said earnestly, then took a sip of the daiquiri. She'd work on that one first.

The brunette focused on her drink for a few moments, waiting until after Kurt had seated himself and gotten comfortable before she spoke again. "So uh, I'm sorry for canceling all of a sudden last time," she began somewhat uncertainly. That uncertainty grew almost immediately after she opened her mouth, morphing and twisting into an anxious, sickening knot in the pit of her stomach. It weighed her down, made her so uncomfortable and hesitant and unwilling to move or speak for fear she'd make the feeling worse. But she'd already started her apology, she needed to finish it, to explain why she'd canceled, tell him what happened. She already started, she just needed to finish it. Just say it! "Um..." Her brows furrowed. Her mouth closed, opened, closed again.

She inhaled and opened it once more as she lifted her metallic hand from its spot on her lap, as she remembered its existence again, "So I finally got my prosthesis. Finally," she repeated for emphasis, because it had taken so long to get it, and this was okay, right? It was fine to just talk about this first, of course it was. It was fine. She'd.. she'd keep going in a couple minutes, she'd finish her apology then. Maybe a little more alcohol would help.  

[TawnyAngel]

s**t, what had happened? He'd never seen Sera look uncertain, anxious, miserable like that before. Whatever it was she wasn't ready to talk about it yet, maybe she needed time and alcohol to work up to it. Luckily they had a very good distraction for now.

"Oh, nice!" Aulus said, sounding thoroughly impressed as he lent over the table for a closer look. "How are you finding it so far? Any special features?"

This was weird. He'd always thought that whenever she finally got her hand they'd get drunk for good reasons, but that didn't seem like it was going to be the case. s**t happened, seemed to happen to both of them quite a lot.... Though not to him recently actually. Even if life was done kicking him around for now though it obviously hadn't finished with Sera.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

As Kurt leaned closer, Sera held the metal appendage out obligingly, palm-up. "I keep forgetting I have it," she admitted somewhat sheepishly. "I'm remembering it more often now though; I've had it for a few weeks now. Which..." Her brows furrowed as she frowned thoughtfully, "I didn't think it'd been that long." Had it really been a month already? On one hand it didn't feel like any time had passed at all; on the other, it felt like ages ago. Sera reached for her martini to take another sip.

In answer to his question, the brunette flipped her arm over and pulled up her dark sleeve a little to reveal a small, smooth screen on the back of the wrist. "They installed a kind of smartwatch screen so I can text and stuff with it without using my phone," a feature she still forgot about, "and I can take pictures with it too." At the moment, the screen merely showed the time in sleek white text over the black screen that more or less blended in with the dark gray metal. "It's completely waterproof and it really works like a real hand - minus the fact I can break stuff a lot easier and kind of by accident, anyway - so it's... really nice. When I remember it, anyway. My favorite feature, though..." Sera flipped the arm over again and carefully pressed her thumb into one of two circular indentations near the base; a moment later the piece slid back to reveal a minimized pokeball. The brunette pressed it down a bit, eliciting a soft 'click' from it, and pulled the sphere out from her arm.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Ha!" Despite knowing there was something unpleasant lurking beneath the surface he couldn't help grinning as the pokeball appeared. "Now that's a good idea!" Did he still have any spare space he could fit a compartment like that into? Possibly but he didn't really want to mess with anything too much at the moment, he was still getting used to the scanning doo-hicky and asking the techies to do too much felt like pushing his luck in any case.

"Can't say I ever forgot mine, but that could be because a) I was without the limb for a much shorter time and b) it was bloody heavy at first," Aulus continued with a wry smile, reaching out with his metal hand to pick up the daiquiri and taking a sip. "Actually using it though did take a while to get used to, the sensations from it were pretty weird at first. Does yours feel 'real' or is it a bit different to your other hand?" Civvie tech was nothing to rocket tech of course but on the other hand civvie medicine focused on restoring function whereas rockets tended to opt for 'I can make this better', which led to hidden claws and chemical identification capability.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Right?" She said, expression bright for just a moment or two before dimming, though not completely; she still had this to focus on, after all. "It wasn't long enough to fit a full six in there, but they at least could fit two. I wasn't supposed to have it, but they added it as a kind of apology when they ******** it up at first. I should've had it ages ago, but that obviously didn't happen." Maybe if she had, then...

No, none of that.

"Well then of course not," she said as she popped the pokeball back into the slot. "You didn't really have time to get used to only having one so long.. But the weight probably helped too," the brunette admitted as she lifted her glass and took another sip. "Mine's pretty lightweight, and doesn't really feel too much heavier than a regular arm I think? Whenever I do forget it, it's always when it's just sitting somewhere. If I'm walking around or it's hanging down, then it's a little bit harder to forget about."  

[TawnyAngel]

"Damn right," Aulus replied with a scowl. "How do you even ******** up that badly? And something that important? You'd think they'd sodding check." These were sentiments that he'd expressed before though, at some length, and now Sera had the hand it probably didn't need going over again. "Anyway, glad you've finally got that sorted out."

And now....

Whatever had happened was like an Onix in the room, if she didn't actually want to talk about it he wasn't about to try to make her but it loomed large whether it was acknowledged or not.

After a moment Aulus said; "I went around Sandalwood the other day, got some nice autumnal shots. Want to see?"  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Right? I don't even know how they managed that one. Something about someone messing up some measurements somewhere or something lame like that," she went on with a huff and a shrug. Oh well, it wasn't like it mattered much now; she had her brand new prosthesis and it worked more or less like a real hand, not including a few additional features that regular arms didn't usually come with. "Yeah, me too."

The Onix in the room bumbled about in the pit of Sera's stomach - or at least it felt like it, with the anxiety and misery that suddenly rolled about deep down and made her feel sick - but then Kurt provided another distraction in the form of a topic change. Seraphine, who normally didn't really care much for scenery of any kind if it didn't have lights or something extra to make it attractive, jumped on it immediately. "Oh, yes," the brunette said eagerly, even going so far as to lean forward a little closer in preparation to see the pictures on... something. She didn't know what, but she knew damn well she wanted to see pictures rather than tackle the subject she had no desire to tackle at the moment. Not without more alcohol, that was; the thought prompted her to take another sip of her daiquiri.  

[TawnyAngel]

Seen as it had a slightly bigger screen Aulus dug his rather neglected phone out of his pocket and flicked through to the album. "Got to spend the whole day out there, there's some nice shots of wild pokemom too," he said as he passed it to Sera. "Swipe left from there and you'll go through the day, just around sunset I found a herd of Sawsbuck and Deerling, those are my favourite shots."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Sera took another quick sip before accepting the phone carefully - very carefully - in her metal hand, and proceeded to study and swipe through the various pictures. The more she saw of the forest, the more it reminded her of how nice an evening it had been there before everything went to s**t, and after a point she passed the phone back before she'd finished going through all the pictures. "Those look nice," she said honestly, though her acute misery had returned in full force.

She dropped her cheek into her palm, drummed her fingers on the table, grabbed her daiquiri and took another sip, downed the rest of it, and set the glass back on the table.

Her misery didn't abate.

Fine. Fine.

"Sorry," she said, using the apology as a starting point, "I just.. I told you something happened, but I didn't-- it was in the forest. Outside Camphoreon," she added miserably, the memories flooding back and contorting her face with misery, sorrow, mourning, regret; those same emotions caused her voice to waver, but she struggled to continue regardless. "I.. I always let some of my pokemon go out hunting by themselves, but this time I went to just sit around and wait for them, and I.. was attacked by Team Rocket," Sera admitted, her voice cracking as tears formed in her eyes and threatened to fall. How dare they, how dare he, how could she have let this happen, how could she have let Jacques down so terribly... She sucked in a shuddering breath and went on, "He attacked me and they came back to help, and Taavi came too - I ran into him before going into the forest but he went a different way - and we tried so hard to fend him off, but he wouldn't stop trying and he.. his Scyther, it..." Deep breaths -- deep breaths. "It killed him," she managed to choke out finally. The words opened the floodgates; her shoulders trembled as she dropped her face into her hands, tears spilling freely down her cheeks, through her fingers, down her arms as she took another shuddering breath to steady herself. It didn't work. "My Zoroark, it killed him, he.. It tried to kill my Absol but he saved her and I couldn't do anything -- I couldn't do anything, I let him down, I... It's all my fault and now he's dead, and.." Her hands balled into fists over her eyes, her face contorted into a pained grimace as she gritted her teeth. It was all her fault. How could she have let this happen?