Topaz and Garrison: Odd Drinking Partners
Feb. 7th, 2018 07:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsTopaz is avoiding going home and Garrison is... drinking. Somehow, this works.
Topaz didn't usually go the local bars. She preferred the city, where she could be lost in a sea of people and there was less chance of running into the mansion people. She had less than a month until her twenty-first birthday, and she was sure most people wouldn't care, but there were a select few who might, especially about her fake ID.
The FBI agent sitting at the bar was probably one who would care. But it was too late for Topaz to back out - the bartender had already caught her and was asking what she wanted. She took a deep breath and walked over, hoping he was too preoccupied with his own stuff to notice or recognize her, and quietly ordered a vodka and sprite, producing her ID when asked.
Her drink arrived, and it spurred the first bit of reaction from the man.
"He knows its fake." Topaz looked at Kane as he drained his pint and waved for another. "Harry knows its fake. He's checking to see if it will fool the local cops who might actually care. See, he decides when he thinks someone is adult enough to drink."
Topaz looked over at Kane, then back the bartender - Harry, apparently. After a moment she shrugged. "It's been getting me by for a while. I'll thank him for not chopping it up, though." She'd seen that happen at another bar. To be fair, though, that kid definitely had been older than sixteen.
"Harry is an old friend to the mansion. You can trust him to do the right thing, even if it means him coming down on you." Kane said. "How are you doing? I got a bit of intel from Amanda from what happened in England."
Topaz's jaw clenched, her eyes going back to staring blankly over that bar, and she took a long sip before answering. There had probably been reports and all that. And of course Amanda would tell someone Or multiple someones. Everyone knew once again how useless she was. "M'alright. Not exactly the worst thing to ever happen." Really in the grand scheme of things, it hadn't even been a blip on the radar. Just another personal failing.
"Really? A suggestion, kid. Never play poker. You're shit at bluffing." He motioned to Brier for a pair of shots and walked them over to her. "So, here's the deal. I'm happy if you want to not talk about it. I'm happy if you want to talk about it. Just don't bullshit me. Sound fair?"
Topaz bit down several responses she knew would get some kind of rise out of Kane. He wasn't trying to belittle her, and there was no point in being sensitive about it. "Yeah, alright," she finally said after a minute. "My father tried to raise my mother from the dead and ended up bringing back a zombie I killed, after almost being burned to death myself by a raging madman who probably has it out for both of us but might just be happy with killing my father, which is honestly fine by me at this point. It freaking sucked." She picked up the shot glass, toasting Kane. "Cheers."
"Well, you have a more fucked up family relationship than mine. Well done." He toasted her shot glass and tossed it back. "Anything I can do to help?"
"Not exactly an award anyone wants," Topaz muttered before tossing back her shot as well. "Nah, it's business as usual, isn't it? Kid fucks up, adult has to save 'em. It's almost cliche at this point."
"Really? I thought you were smart." Kane waved for another couple of shots. "Kids are kids."
"If I was smart I would've killed my father when I had the chance." Topaz took the shot glass when offered. "Saved myself all of this bloody trouble."
"I used to say the same thing. I was wrong." He threw back the rye, savouring the rough blend. "You were right. Doesn't make it easier."
Topaz considered that for a moment while she took her own shot. She didn't usually do shots, but the momentary burn in the back of her throat wasn't horrible. Had she been right to let Taboo walk away again? He was going to come back. He'd keep coming back, until he was dead, all the Destines were dead, or Topaz was dead. Yet... she knew Kane was right. She wasn't sure she'd have been able to live with herself if she killed him, no matter what she said to everyone. And herself. "Yeah," she finally said. "I suppose so."
"If your dad needs killing, don't be the one to do it. It sounds noble and responsible and heroic and all the other bullshit. But it's not. It's justifying the action through your own hurt. You hate him? Throw the fucker in a six by six cell for the rest of his natural life, there to wonder when you're going by to gloat and getting increasingly pissed off when you don't." Kane turned his shot glass around in his fingers speculatively, watching the bar lights reflect off the curved glass. "I also recommend regular sex and heavy drinking as a solution, but let's be honest, I use the same answer when someone asks me what I want for lunch, so it might just be me as opposed to good advice."
"Got the drinking part down already," Topaz said dryly, holding up her empty shot glass. "Had that perfected for...." Three years. God, had it really been three years? "Well, ya know." She shrugged. "I don't think I could kill him," she admitted after a moment. "I've thought about it a lot. Imagined how I'd do it. But I'm a lot of talk."
"Good. Killing is hard. I'm told it is occasionally necessary, but I don't know if I believe that." He waved for more drinks. "I don't think you can go that route without it changing you. I killed a god... or at least a human shell for one and it broke my mind."
Topaz tilted her head, first assessing if she was already drunk and had misheard, then just turning the words over in her head for a moment. "That's not even the weirdest thing I've heard this month," she finally concluded. "It's up there, though."
"I was a normal person before I showed up here. I was a Mountie who was funny and women swooned over my uniform and pecs. Show up here, a god beats me to death with a magic hammer, I fight a dragon with my dad and a weird techno-nerd nearly BBQ's me to death. My girlfriend is driven into a coma for touching the wrong guy in a soup line accidentally." Kane accepted a new pint and took a sip. "Oh, and I once had sex with a woman who the NYC sewer system mirrored her orgasm. This is a fundamentally weird life."
Topaz had to take a sip of her own drink before speaking again. "That is.... so much more than I ever wanted or needed to know about Amanda's sex life." Another sip. "It's the mansion. It's cursed. Has to be."
"It's not. It's that mutants change everything, and we put ourselves on the front line of dealing with them."
Topaz put her glass down, tracing the rim slowly, her eyes following her finger. "And yet we stay," she said finally. "We stay and we put ourselves in these weird positions on teams that seem to have an obsession with the letter X, and sometimes we don't even go looking for the trouble, it just finds us. And I'd ask why, but the answer is always to protect mutants and make the world better."
"The answer is in the mission statement, Topaz. We protect mutants, so we're drawn to the issues that harm them. You bothered by that? Want out? I guarantee you move out and you'll have no more issues."
The silence was longer this time, and the finger tracing the glass stopped. "I don't know," Topaz said. "I can deal with the mutant problems. It might seem slightly mad to constantly throw ourselves into the fire, but at least there's a reason for it. It's everything else that seems to follow me wherever I go." She picked up her drink and drained it, shaking her head. "Doesn't matter, I suppose."
"Of course it does. The only difference is you're not dealing with it on your own."
Harry delivered another drink before Topaz had to ask. Oh he was good. "Yeah. Could be worse." She took a sip of her drink. "Shouldn't say that, though. Universe seems to take it as a challenge."
:Whether you say it or not, it isn't going to change," Kane said. "This is the life."
"I suppose." Topaz swished her drink around for a moment before holding it up in a fake toast. "Here's to life, then."
"Here's to the life." He clinked with hers. "You know, years ago, I asked my dad what he thought made a hero. He said heroes were accidents of circumstance. But what made a good man, or woman, presumably, is the people who had every opportunity and reason to choose something different and still put themselves in danger."
Topaz swirled her drink around, tilting her head. She couldn't say she was any of those things, except maybe an accident. "So the ones who are too thick-headed to give up?" There was no snark or insulting tone in her voice. "Or too stubborn?"
"Or have decided that the cost of inaction is more than the potential loss. You forget, Topaz, that the X isn't the uniform I wear. I work with people who could be doing immensely safer things for much more money and yet..." He tossed off the last of his drink and waved for another. "they show up every day. We show up every day. It's just who we are. And if you're that person, all denying it is going to do is make you unhappy."
"It's not..." Topaz sighed, shaking her head and sipping her drink. She couldn't make sense of her own thoughts right at that moment. She admired the people who could wake up and show up every day and make a difference. She wanted to be one of those people, somehow. She just seemed to do more harm than good half the time. "I don't know. What happened in London's got me a bit muddled, I guess."
"No shit. I didn't get the full details, but I've learned to read between the lines on Amanda's reports." Magic was far from his comfort zone, although training with Twoyoungman had made it significantly less alien and unbelievable to him as some in the mansion. "There's nothing wrong in getting beaten down. People have a tendency to forget that."
"I can deal with getting beaten down. Not so much watching everyone else get tossed around because..." Because I'm fucking useless and can't take care of myself, "because of something that's my problem." Topaz took another sip of her drink. "And zombies. Dealing with zombies is kind of hard too."
"The good and the bad of being part of a community. You can't be there to help them with their shit and then think somehow they'll be isolated from yours. See, the thing about having each other's back is that it goes both ways." He pointed out.
When was the last time she had helped anyone? Topaz bit down the self-deprecating thought. She wasn't going to go down the self-pity road, Kane didn't seem like the kind of person who stood for it. "Yeah, I've learned that," she said instead. "Everyone's had more than their fair share of problems."
"This school has California's fair share of problems. It's a shit magnet, to borrow an old and beloved law enforcement term."
"Been a while since we had an invasion," Topaz said sarcastically. "Over six months at least. I think we're due."
"Yeah. So what do you do if you think the next one is because of you?"
Topaz frowned, looking over at him. "Deal with it?" She said uncertainly. "I mean, I'm not going to just run away." She downed the last of her drink. "Although I suppose my track record is something to be desired. I don't generally run away from problems I cause, though."
"Sounds like you've already figured out what you need to be doing. Whether what people end up facing is because of you or not. So congrats." He waved over another round and gave her a sideways grin. "You just officially joined the fight. The only question now is which flavour you want to choose."
"Flavor?" Topaz repeated, bewildered.
"Sure. The X-Men, X-Force, X-Factor... that group Barton's been working on."
"Uh... the weirdos, I guess?" Topaz said slowly. "Barton's group. I've been helping with their library archives."
"Huh, figured you would have followed Amanda. But to each their own." Kane took a sip of his pint. "Anyhow, that's enough shop talk for one night. I suppose it is too much to hope you pay attention to hockey, eh?"
"Pretty sure she wouldn't let me." A single eyebrow crept slowly up. "That's the one on the ice, right?" She asked, an almost joking tone in her voice.
"I weep for the next generation."
Topaz didn't usually go the local bars. She preferred the city, where she could be lost in a sea of people and there was less chance of running into the mansion people. She had less than a month until her twenty-first birthday, and she was sure most people wouldn't care, but there were a select few who might, especially about her fake ID.
The FBI agent sitting at the bar was probably one who would care. But it was too late for Topaz to back out - the bartender had already caught her and was asking what she wanted. She took a deep breath and walked over, hoping he was too preoccupied with his own stuff to notice or recognize her, and quietly ordered a vodka and sprite, producing her ID when asked.
Her drink arrived, and it spurred the first bit of reaction from the man.
"He knows its fake." Topaz looked at Kane as he drained his pint and waved for another. "Harry knows its fake. He's checking to see if it will fool the local cops who might actually care. See, he decides when he thinks someone is adult enough to drink."
Topaz looked over at Kane, then back the bartender - Harry, apparently. After a moment she shrugged. "It's been getting me by for a while. I'll thank him for not chopping it up, though." She'd seen that happen at another bar. To be fair, though, that kid definitely had been older than sixteen.
"Harry is an old friend to the mansion. You can trust him to do the right thing, even if it means him coming down on you." Kane said. "How are you doing? I got a bit of intel from Amanda from what happened in England."
Topaz's jaw clenched, her eyes going back to staring blankly over that bar, and she took a long sip before answering. There had probably been reports and all that. And of course Amanda would tell someone Or multiple someones. Everyone knew once again how useless she was. "M'alright. Not exactly the worst thing to ever happen." Really in the grand scheme of things, it hadn't even been a blip on the radar. Just another personal failing.
"Really? A suggestion, kid. Never play poker. You're shit at bluffing." He motioned to Brier for a pair of shots and walked them over to her. "So, here's the deal. I'm happy if you want to not talk about it. I'm happy if you want to talk about it. Just don't bullshit me. Sound fair?"
Topaz bit down several responses she knew would get some kind of rise out of Kane. He wasn't trying to belittle her, and there was no point in being sensitive about it. "Yeah, alright," she finally said after a minute. "My father tried to raise my mother from the dead and ended up bringing back a zombie I killed, after almost being burned to death myself by a raging madman who probably has it out for both of us but might just be happy with killing my father, which is honestly fine by me at this point. It freaking sucked." She picked up the shot glass, toasting Kane. "Cheers."
"Well, you have a more fucked up family relationship than mine. Well done." He toasted her shot glass and tossed it back. "Anything I can do to help?"
"Not exactly an award anyone wants," Topaz muttered before tossing back her shot as well. "Nah, it's business as usual, isn't it? Kid fucks up, adult has to save 'em. It's almost cliche at this point."
"Really? I thought you were smart." Kane waved for another couple of shots. "Kids are kids."
"If I was smart I would've killed my father when I had the chance." Topaz took the shot glass when offered. "Saved myself all of this bloody trouble."
"I used to say the same thing. I was wrong." He threw back the rye, savouring the rough blend. "You were right. Doesn't make it easier."
Topaz considered that for a moment while she took her own shot. She didn't usually do shots, but the momentary burn in the back of her throat wasn't horrible. Had she been right to let Taboo walk away again? He was going to come back. He'd keep coming back, until he was dead, all the Destines were dead, or Topaz was dead. Yet... she knew Kane was right. She wasn't sure she'd have been able to live with herself if she killed him, no matter what she said to everyone. And herself. "Yeah," she finally said. "I suppose so."
"If your dad needs killing, don't be the one to do it. It sounds noble and responsible and heroic and all the other bullshit. But it's not. It's justifying the action through your own hurt. You hate him? Throw the fucker in a six by six cell for the rest of his natural life, there to wonder when you're going by to gloat and getting increasingly pissed off when you don't." Kane turned his shot glass around in his fingers speculatively, watching the bar lights reflect off the curved glass. "I also recommend regular sex and heavy drinking as a solution, but let's be honest, I use the same answer when someone asks me what I want for lunch, so it might just be me as opposed to good advice."
"Got the drinking part down already," Topaz said dryly, holding up her empty shot glass. "Had that perfected for...." Three years. God, had it really been three years? "Well, ya know." She shrugged. "I don't think I could kill him," she admitted after a moment. "I've thought about it a lot. Imagined how I'd do it. But I'm a lot of talk."
"Good. Killing is hard. I'm told it is occasionally necessary, but I don't know if I believe that." He waved for more drinks. "I don't think you can go that route without it changing you. I killed a god... or at least a human shell for one and it broke my mind."
Topaz tilted her head, first assessing if she was already drunk and had misheard, then just turning the words over in her head for a moment. "That's not even the weirdest thing I've heard this month," she finally concluded. "It's up there, though."
"I was a normal person before I showed up here. I was a Mountie who was funny and women swooned over my uniform and pecs. Show up here, a god beats me to death with a magic hammer, I fight a dragon with my dad and a weird techno-nerd nearly BBQ's me to death. My girlfriend is driven into a coma for touching the wrong guy in a soup line accidentally." Kane accepted a new pint and took a sip. "Oh, and I once had sex with a woman who the NYC sewer system mirrored her orgasm. This is a fundamentally weird life."
Topaz had to take a sip of her own drink before speaking again. "That is.... so much more than I ever wanted or needed to know about Amanda's sex life." Another sip. "It's the mansion. It's cursed. Has to be."
"It's not. It's that mutants change everything, and we put ourselves on the front line of dealing with them."
Topaz put her glass down, tracing the rim slowly, her eyes following her finger. "And yet we stay," she said finally. "We stay and we put ourselves in these weird positions on teams that seem to have an obsession with the letter X, and sometimes we don't even go looking for the trouble, it just finds us. And I'd ask why, but the answer is always to protect mutants and make the world better."
"The answer is in the mission statement, Topaz. We protect mutants, so we're drawn to the issues that harm them. You bothered by that? Want out? I guarantee you move out and you'll have no more issues."
The silence was longer this time, and the finger tracing the glass stopped. "I don't know," Topaz said. "I can deal with the mutant problems. It might seem slightly mad to constantly throw ourselves into the fire, but at least there's a reason for it. It's everything else that seems to follow me wherever I go." She picked up her drink and drained it, shaking her head. "Doesn't matter, I suppose."
"Of course it does. The only difference is you're not dealing with it on your own."
Harry delivered another drink before Topaz had to ask. Oh he was good. "Yeah. Could be worse." She took a sip of her drink. "Shouldn't say that, though. Universe seems to take it as a challenge."
:Whether you say it or not, it isn't going to change," Kane said. "This is the life."
"I suppose." Topaz swished her drink around for a moment before holding it up in a fake toast. "Here's to life, then."
"Here's to the life." He clinked with hers. "You know, years ago, I asked my dad what he thought made a hero. He said heroes were accidents of circumstance. But what made a good man, or woman, presumably, is the people who had every opportunity and reason to choose something different and still put themselves in danger."
Topaz swirled her drink around, tilting her head. She couldn't say she was any of those things, except maybe an accident. "So the ones who are too thick-headed to give up?" There was no snark or insulting tone in her voice. "Or too stubborn?"
"Or have decided that the cost of inaction is more than the potential loss. You forget, Topaz, that the X isn't the uniform I wear. I work with people who could be doing immensely safer things for much more money and yet..." He tossed off the last of his drink and waved for another. "they show up every day. We show up every day. It's just who we are. And if you're that person, all denying it is going to do is make you unhappy."
"It's not..." Topaz sighed, shaking her head and sipping her drink. She couldn't make sense of her own thoughts right at that moment. She admired the people who could wake up and show up every day and make a difference. She wanted to be one of those people, somehow. She just seemed to do more harm than good half the time. "I don't know. What happened in London's got me a bit muddled, I guess."
"No shit. I didn't get the full details, but I've learned to read between the lines on Amanda's reports." Magic was far from his comfort zone, although training with Twoyoungman had made it significantly less alien and unbelievable to him as some in the mansion. "There's nothing wrong in getting beaten down. People have a tendency to forget that."
"I can deal with getting beaten down. Not so much watching everyone else get tossed around because..." Because I'm fucking useless and can't take care of myself, "because of something that's my problem." Topaz took another sip of her drink. "And zombies. Dealing with zombies is kind of hard too."
"The good and the bad of being part of a community. You can't be there to help them with their shit and then think somehow they'll be isolated from yours. See, the thing about having each other's back is that it goes both ways." He pointed out.
When was the last time she had helped anyone? Topaz bit down the self-deprecating thought. She wasn't going to go down the self-pity road, Kane didn't seem like the kind of person who stood for it. "Yeah, I've learned that," she said instead. "Everyone's had more than their fair share of problems."
"This school has California's fair share of problems. It's a shit magnet, to borrow an old and beloved law enforcement term."
"Been a while since we had an invasion," Topaz said sarcastically. "Over six months at least. I think we're due."
"Yeah. So what do you do if you think the next one is because of you?"
Topaz frowned, looking over at him. "Deal with it?" She said uncertainly. "I mean, I'm not going to just run away." She downed the last of her drink. "Although I suppose my track record is something to be desired. I don't generally run away from problems I cause, though."
"Sounds like you've already figured out what you need to be doing. Whether what people end up facing is because of you or not. So congrats." He waved over another round and gave her a sideways grin. "You just officially joined the fight. The only question now is which flavour you want to choose."
"Flavor?" Topaz repeated, bewildered.
"Sure. The X-Men, X-Force, X-Factor... that group Barton's been working on."
"Uh... the weirdos, I guess?" Topaz said slowly. "Barton's group. I've been helping with their library archives."
"Huh, figured you would have followed Amanda. But to each their own." Kane took a sip of his pint. "Anyhow, that's enough shop talk for one night. I suppose it is too much to hope you pay attention to hockey, eh?"
"Pretty sure she wouldn't let me." A single eyebrow crept slowly up. "That's the one on the ice, right?" She asked, an almost joking tone in her voice.
"I weep for the next generation."
