He had put it off as long as was possible. Frankly, the funerals had been easier to deal with. Nevertheless, with break ending on Monday, and the last of the burials more than two weeks old, Rebecca would not tolerate any further delays. So Gaul was facing a crowd of benignly drunken faces, doing his best not to sound like he was delivering a lecture.
“I want to thank you all, both personally, and in my capacity as the Director of the Academy. Your services to our institution in its time of need may very well have prevented its destruction and dissolution, and the Academy is indebted to each of you for the role you played in its preservation.”
Gaul paused and took a sip of water. His mouth was still inexplicably dry. The faces arrayed before him were intimately familiar, cheerfully intoxicated, and worked by Rebecca into a state of enthusiastic complacency. In any other context, he would have invoked the fear of God in them. But not today. Not during the speech he had been dreading since the attack, since he called in the favors, since he realized it would be necessary. He’d tried to keep such events to an absolute minimum in the years he had been Director, instead turning a blind eye to Rebecca’s less official celebrations, but that could only go so far. Clearly, in this case, more was required, for the sake of morale, if nothing else. He’d let Rebecca pick, and to his relief, she had chosen a relatively inexpensive bar on the fringes of Central charmingly named The Toss Up. It had a couple of pool tables, a barbeque in the back, a small dance floor, and the kind of bar that only served cocktails that ended with ‘and coke’, so that was fine with him.
“It would be a mistake to think that, because we are survivors, that we did not sacrifice. Every one of you gave up something in order to see that your home was safe. Some of you may not even realize yet that you have lost anything. But you have. This night is not just a reward, though you have earned a reward. Nor is it merely a celebration of victory, though certainly, a celebration is called for. Rather, tonight is a celebration of our survival, the protection of our homes and the continuity of our values, the security of our families and the conviction of our beliefs. This party is a celebration of your excellence, in rising to the occasion, in doing what was demanded of you, when nothing less would have been sufficient. We celebrate, in short, that when it came time to stand or fall, we choose to stand.”
The speech was awful. He knew it. There was simply nothing he could do to make it any better. His position obligated him to make it. He had been careful to position himself so that he couldn’t see Rebecca rolling her eyes and laughing at him. Instead, he found himself looking at Anastasia’s polite smile, which was sort of like looking at the teeth of an elaborately coifed shark. Behind her, the rest of the Black Sun stood as a monolith, students, combat teams, and even the senior Martynova himself. Across from them, North stood at the head of a hierarchically organized group of Hegemonic soldiers. Caught in the crossfire of their muted hostility, he almost lost his place on the scrolling text he was reading on his head’s up display.
“So, please, all of you enjoy tonight. For the staff, I remind you that Monday is a workday. For those of you who are still students at the Academy, I remind you that permission to drink reasonably for the evening does not give you license to overindulge, and that Monday is a school day. The rest of you, I remind you that you are guests here, and to behave accordingly. Thank you. Good night.”
Scattered applause, louder when they saw he was walking away, relieved that the speech was over. Heading for the door, his various social obligations be damned. He could not imagine having to talk to North right now, even worse if the senior Martynova decided he wanted to chat. Rebecca headed him off smoothly, grabbing him by the elbow and steering him away from the exit and toward the bar.
“You know how to end a speech,” she said cheerfully, her cheeks flushed with drink.
“Shut up,” Gaul said tersely. “You know I hate this kind of thing.”
“I do know that,” she said gently, using his arm to hop up on her bar stool, still somehow vacant despite the crowd at the bar, all of whom gave them a respectable distance.
“And I know that you are manipulating me to calm me down and keep me here so I can chat with the important people,” Gaul continued.
“Of course you do,” Rebecca affirmed, flagging the bartender down with ridiculous ease. He walked over to them, bypassing a half-dozen people who had been there longer, but no one objected. The brunette bartender looked over at Rebecca adoringly.
“Two whiskeys,” Gaul snapped. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”
The stunned bartender scurried to obey. Rebecca cocked an eyebrow in his direction.
“Don’t look at me that way,” Gaul said. “After that speech, anyone would need a drink.”
It took a couple of drinks, and a little nudging on her part; some empathic foundation work, as it were, a little shoring up, and she had Gaul as ready and willing as he would ever be. She sent him off in the direction of North and his resurgent Hegemony crowd, figuring he should start there. Anastasia and her father could wait. If the Black Sun could be said to have virtues, then patience was one of them. Rebecca felt a bit tipsy, but not as drunk as she would have expected, given what she’d had to drink. She did a quick turn around the bar, stopping in to check on a few sad faces, urging a couple of shy folks toward the dance floor, smoothing out a few brows wrinkled with anger or grief. She was the good hostess, the very incarnation of hostessness. Then she went outside for some air. Some air, she thought cheerfully, and a cigarette.
Without her, it wouldn’t have been much of a party. The wounds were still too fresh, too many faces still absent. A few weeks weren’t enough time to adjust. However, they all needed some kind of release, some kind of acknowledgement, before they could go back to the real world, to their lives and responsibilities. Rebecca quietly removed the inhibitions that might have made this the kind of party where people drink heavily and grimly. By the time she made it outside the small dance floor was in use, the pool tables crowded, the conversation boisterous. She wondered idly how many people would get laid tonight because of her, and then she wondered bitterly why she was never one of them.
The restaurant had a small patio surrounded by a larger gravel-lined outdoor area, and it was far less crowded than the inside of the place had been. She nodded at a few people, glanced around at the little knots of smokers and conversation, and then she noticed him, standing on the other side of the gravel walkway, by the fence, at just the right angle so he could see in through the back window of the bar. He was so engrossed by whatever he was watching that he did not even notice her walk up next to him.
“You have a pretty good view of the dance floor from here,” Rebecca observed, lighting up her cigarette with satisfaction. Alex almost dumped the beer he was holding all over the ground in front of him.
“Don’t do that,” Alex said, glaring as if she had snuck up on him. “My nerves are fucking shot. I swear, after this last break, I think I need another vacation — hey, wait a minute. You are wearing a dress,” he said, looking her up and down, maybe a little shamelessly, before glancing back at the window. “You never wear dresses. It looks really good on you.”
In fact, she was wearing a grey skirt and top that matched so perfectly that they resembled a dress, but she was pleased with the compliment nonetheless. Sometimes, she thought, blowing smoke at the stars that should have been there, on the other side of the fog, it was easy to understand what Eerie saw in Alex. No one else had commented on her outfit. Moreover, he was always honest, so if he said it looked good, then it did.
“She’s a good dancer,” Rebecca remarked a moment later, stealing Alex’s beer when she realized that he was not actually drinking it.
“Yeah,” Alex said, obviously unaware of how much longing flitted briefly across his face at that moment. Rebecca winced at the thick, cloying sweetness of the porter he was drinking and gave it back to him. “Yeah, she is.”
Rebecca waited a little while longer, sensing that he had more to say. She was not disappointed.
“I’m sorry,” he said, turning to her abruptly, “I guess I’m being kinda creepy, just staring, right?”
“It could be,” Rebecca said, nodding. “It probably would be, if she didn’t know you were watching her.”
Alex actually jumped back, as if he was being attacked, and Rebecca was lost to a fit of giggling. He just stood there, trying to decide whether he was going to be embarrassed, angry, or amused.
“You can tell? Is that because you are an empath?”
Rebecca laughed again.
“Because I am a woman. It’s an instinctive thing. Also, she keeps looking over here. You just aren’t watching her eyes, per se.”
“I don’t even have a chance, right? She hates me, and I don’t blame her. I mean, there is no reason for me to go talk to her or anything. Because she hates me.”
“She buried one of the only people who she cared for not long ago,” Rebecca said tiredly. “It is unbecoming to make this about you.”
Alex looked aghast, and then, nodded slowly, in that way that he did every time he was confronted with a basic social lesson that he had somehow never received: confusion, followed by acceptance. Like it was all news to him, but he still deserved credit for trying.
“Sorry,” Alex said guiltily. “I have this tendency…”
“I know,” Rebecca said, internally forgiving him. “Don’t worry about it. Now stop being such a wimp, and go dance with her.”
“I don’t dance,” Alex said, shaking his head. “This is one of the many crippling obstacles to our getting along. I should go home now.”
“Oh, please,” Rebecca said, rolling her eyes as she pitched her cigarette onto the gravel. “If you are trying to reverse psychology me into giving you the courage to go talk to the girl you like, you are shit out of luck.”
Alex scuffed at the gravel with his sneaker and looked dejected.
“It would be great if you…”
“Fight your own battles, kid,” Rebecca said, smiling indulgently. “Besides, I thought you were through with letting empaths manipulate you.”
Alex looked at her in surprise, and then shook his head again.
“I’ll never get used to telepathy,” he said, sounding very down about it, for some reason. “I thought you weren’t that good at it, though.”
“Alistair locked me inside my head for weeks,” she said, shrugging and reaching for her cigarettes. “I had a lot of time to practice. Stop changing the subject. Go talk to Eerie. Work out whatever it is that is wrong between the two of you. I am tired of watching you mope, and she needs someone to comfort her. If you can fight Weir, you should be able to go talk to a girl.”
Alex looked over for pity, but she just motioned for him to go.
“This seems harder,” Alex said morosely, heading in through the door, holding his beer like a protective charm, clutched to his chest.
Rebecca smiled to herself, a brittle, somewhat happy smile, and lit another cigarette. She watched them while she smoked, looking through the same window that Alex had been using to watch Eerie dance. She did not acknowledge the woman who leaned up against the fence beside her, but she did take the beer that she offered. She was polite enough not to say anything until Rebecca finished her cigarette.
“If I watch them be all cutesy anymore, I’m going to be sick,” Alice declared, absently peeling the label from her empty beer bottle. “You being everyone’s fairy godmother this evening?”
Rebecca laughed, and it was a genuine laugh. It felt good, the first thing that had, really, since the series of funerals.
“Just trying to fix the things that got screwed up while I was out of commission. You know,” Rebecca said thoughtfully, “I was stupid to think I could do both jobs. Stupid to think that I could just go out into the field every now and then, to keep my hand in, and not get somebody killed. Stupid to think that I could keep this place running, only working part-time.”
“You are a terror out there,” Alice said fondly. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to give it up. Personally, I’ll never be able to walk away.”
“I might not have been able to see through Alistair,” Rebecca said softly, “because he was always a clever bastard. However, there is no way that a teenage girl should have been able to pull one over on me the way Emily did. None of that should have happened, and it wouldn’t have, if I had been watching closer.”
Alice put her arm around Rebecca, and Rebecca leaned her tired head on Alice’s shoulder. She smelled like the vanilla lotion that she had been using for years, and Rebecca found it profoundly comforting that she had started again. Rebecca was glad she had secretly stocked some in Alice’s bathroom.
“One good thing about forgetting everything — you learn, pretty fast, that there’s no point in regrets. Once something's done, there is no going back. That’s it,” Alice said quietly. “Nothing can be changed. All that’s left, really, is whatever you do now.”
Rebecca straightened up and laughed again.
“That was almost profound,” Rebecca teased. “And what about you, Miss No Regrets? You wouldn’t be hovering around because of who is working the grill this evening, would you?”
Alice look embarrassed, and Rebecca felt bad for her. She could not even imagine how strange and difficult this situation was for her.
“I read about it, you know,” Alice said morosely. “All about us. All the things we did together, when it was good, and then all the things we did to each other, once it went bad. I know Michael and I have a history. I know we are supposed to hate each other, and I know why, because I read about it. But, when I look at him, I don’t feel any of that. All that stuff, the good and the bad, it all feels like it happened to somebody else. When I look at him, I don’t see my ex. I don’t remember the fights. I just see a man that I cannot help but want. Thinking about him keeps me up at night. And I guess it’s not fair to expect him to move beyond it all at once. But I am so over it all, and I just want to take him home with me, you know?”
Alice shook her head and looked a bit appalled, but Rebecca noticed something in her eyes, for a moment, that hinted at all those years, and the grievous toll they had taken.
“Pathetic, isn’t it?” Alice said with a smile. “I guess I want you to be my fairy godmother too, Rebecca.”
“No way,” Rebecca said firmly. “I am nothing but your friend, Alice. No fairy godmother bullshit.”
“Aw…”
“But, as your friend, I will do this much.” Rebecca said, turning Alice by the shoulders, to face Michael, oblivious and cheerful, watching over bubbling steaks and pink bits of skewered chicken. “Quit being such a wimp, Alice, and just go tell him exactly what you told me, word for word. In the unlikely event that he doesn’t jump on you, you can come get stoned and watch TV in bed with me, okay?”
“Right,” Alice said, biting her lip and nodding. “This is weird. Because I have already done this before. But I do feel those butterflies, you know? And you only get those when it’s the first time.”
“It’ll be fun,” Rebecca urged. “Go.”
“Yeah,” Alice said again, staring at Michael. “You gonna be alright?”
“Sure, I have weeks of Survivor recorded and Diet Coke. What else could I possibly need? Now, now, don’t worry about me, you go on…”
Eventually, Alice worked up the courage, and Rebecca soaked in the novelty. She had never seen Alice need to work up her courage to do anything.
Michael was more predictable. He listened to Alice, at first with a suspicious glare, that turned gradually to disbelief and then to stupefaction. His mouth hung open, while Alice continued, looking as nervous as if she had never talked to him before. Michael hesitated for just a moment after she stopped talking, weighing his options, before he did the obvious thing and handed his grill duties over to the bemused Mr. Windsor. Rebecca felt a subtle sense of deja-vu, watching him put his arm around her, cautiously, as one might pet a dangerous dog in a friendly mood, and walk out with her, off into the night.
She sighed and told herself she felt happy for her, happy with them, all of them. No one talked to her, because she did not want anyone to. She went back inside to look for her jacket, still hopeful of catching the next bus back to the Academy, home in time to miss watching the party wane, and the couples move closer and closer together, an instinctual reaction to the night. She found her stuff sitting near the edge of the dance floor. She practically tripped over Eerie on the way, but the smile the girl gave her in passing, so fast she almost missed it, made it all worthwhile.
“Come on,” Eerie said impatiently, pulling Alex by both of his arms. “Don’t be a baby.”
“I don’t know how,” Alex protested, dragging his feet. “I’ve never danced before!”
“Alex is stupid,” Eerie said fondly, pulling him close. “This is a slow song. You don’t have to do anything but hold me.”
And so he did.