multiversallogs | I should have known (OPEN)

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I should have known (OPEN)

Who: Sharon and you?
What: Sharon finally needs something to do
Where: The arena, sundry points around the city
When: various times on Givdi
Notes: The arena post is the only hook I have, but feel free to start something else! PM me if you want to know if something makes sense.
Warnings: mention of suicidal thoughts

Sharon didn't expect to have nightmares in the afterlife. In fact, nothing about Baedal is anything like she might have guessed. Sometimes, she tries to pretend everything between the Cylon attack and her death didn't happen - that she died in the first attack and ended up here.

Sometimes it works, but not very often.

She wonders what would happen if she tried to kill herself here. Could she? If she can, where would she go?

Mostly, she thinks she might as well stay. If there are any Cylons (any other Cylons, a treacherous part of her thinks), they're well hidden; and, after all, there's no one she loves here to betray.

(She doesn't open the book she got at the swap meet.)

After a while exploring and watching, she finds herself drawn to the arena. She was never the brawler like Helo or Starbuck, but she'd taken her turns in the boxing ring on Galactica. She was a trained member of the Colonial fleet. And, really, what was the worst that could happen?

Nothing she felt she wouldn't deserve, in honesty. And it would feel good to be in motion if not in flight. She may look out of place at first, but she does know how to fight.

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The Arena pays well, but it's a difficult thing to maintain full time. The toll it forces you to pay in body and spirit is a steep price when you're a baseline human, even a relatively formidable one such as Jaime Lannister. Injury that hits too critically can mean you've lost your ability to earn at all, months of rest and healing because even once you're well, it's a foolish thing to go immediately back into the field where you could do worse harm to yourself.

His livelihood depends on his health, even if he gambles it every time he comes here. Today, he is bettering his own statistics by only coming to watch.

Most of the time, Jaime doesn't strike up much conversation with strangers, for all that he doesn't shy away from it either. But he doesn't recognise Valerii, and sidles over, bringing with him the scent of leather and horse. He is not in his tin man regalia of beaten steel, but his clothing is neutral and archaic enough that he still resembles the knight he claimed to be, down to being as clean and sharp as any soldier that Sharon brushed shoulders with.

"Where soldiers come when they have no army," he speculates, finding a place to lean.

She's just come off a practice bout, and she's moving for the solo equipment. She'll hear soon whether she has a real fight yet or not; those who run the arena were initially skeptical she'd put on much of a show, but they haven't sent her home yet.

At Jaime's comment, she smiles, wryly. "Looks like it takes one to know one." Even if their armies are probably different in all but the main purpose. "Do you think it's a good substitute?"

"Not really."

His arms fold, and he casts a look from her towards where people fight, or train with a partner or on their own. "But a better substitute for the tourneys back home. Some nobles would wed, some upstart of a knight with wealthy parents given even more titles behind his name, and they'd break out the banners, ale, and jousting lances. A celebration, a good opportunity for young men to flaunt their names and prowess. We all do so love showing off.

"Here, you do it for money, and no one gives a shit about any hard earned titles. Takes some of the shine away but it does raise the stakes." He sounds more casual than bitter; bitterness is just a thing he soaks into the rest of his demeanour of elaborately not caring. "But war is where we're supposed to go to work, but all we have is this. I was in the middle of one, when I was brought here."

"So was I," she says, a bit quieter. Though war was probably overgenerous. A small resistance in the wake of a war they'd lost. (Lost to her people. Lost because of people like her.)

"It feels wrong, still, to have so much leisure time." Even before the attack, she'd been used to military discipline and communal living. Being a civilian felt wrong. (Was it because she'd never really been one?)

"A different measure of warfare, I'm sure," Jaime suggests, with his customary crooked grin. He's heard of many different sorts, some familiar, some fantastical to his ears. "You grow accustomed. To the leisure. I've not had these freedoms since I was fifteen, myself, and I can only suggest you build your own regimen, and never break it."

"Probably good advice," she allows. "What sort of things do you do, besides this?" She prefers to focus on him. It's safer.

Jaime is not quite savvy enough to note her preference of focus, although his smile does go crooked, bemused at her apparent interest. Fortunately, he does consider himself interesting.

"Hone my skills so as not to get killed when I am here. If you're anything like myself, you'll find yourself significantly tried when it comes to running with the pack." A hesitation, before he admits; "I also keep a horse. There are larger forests I can ride without interruption, and make a day or a week of it if I choose."

None of that sounds particularly unlonely, Jaime.

"You know, before I came here, I'd never seen a horse in person? I'd seen pictures, of course, but... it's still strange." She moves to sit, taping up her hands in preparation to use a punching bag.

"Did you fight on horseback, at home? I'd think that'd make a difference, if you're changing your fighting style for the Arena."

There is a snort at that first assertion. Even peasants knew, even rode horses, the savages across the Narrow Sea even ate them, but Jaime supposes that that isn't a claim of stature. Just difference. It usually is.

He shakes his head. "Even in war, I preferred to be in the vanguards with the foot soldiers, although any soldier worth his salt could fight on horseback. In tourneys, we had jousting. I don't suppose you'd know what that is either."

"Not exactly," she confesses. "Fighting for sport of some kind?"

A tip of his head, to communicate sort of not exactly. "You've two men," he says gesturing loosely, and moving also to sit not far from her, "and they start on their mounts on either end of a track. They've lances of wood, and bear shields, and full armour. On the mark, they race towards one another, and use their lances to strike or, better, dehorse the other man.

"It's brutal, and often short. I prefer the sword over the lance, and to worry only for myself rather than an animal. What is it you fight with?" He nods down at her taped hands. "Your fists alone?"

"For sport, yeah. At least at home. A lot of us would box on the ship to let off energy."

She shrugs. "Here... I'm still learning. For actual combat, I use - used - firearms. But I haven't seen any here that are the kind I'm used to. And I flew. Not much call for that set of skills in a place where you can't even get off the ground." Much less into space. She liked being a Raptor pilot, and she'd been good at it, but she tries to imagine a Viper pilot grounded indefinitely. It's probably best that Starbuck hasn't found her way to Baedal.

No confusion reads across Jaime's face, but he's good at his expressions. There's a quizzical line at his brow, but it's made its mark since they begun talking. As she does, he continues to watch practice bouts, his future potential opponents.

"More than a hundred years ago, men didn't only ride horses. They rode dragons. A new sort of warfare, unparalleled. Fire raining down from the skies, melting castles, baking alive the men and women inside of them. They forged the kingdoms into one, and eventually died out.

"But I don't imagine you're referring to dragons."

"No," she says. "No, not dragons." She gets up, stretching her shoulders. "Where I'm from, men have built machines of all kinds." She keeps her voice steady. "Huge ships, of a kind, but instead of sailing in water, they fly. They go out into the stars."

She misses that. When she'd not been sure she'd ever see a planet again, she found the vastness of space a little oppressive. Now she feels chained down by gravity.

"What I flew, it was sort of more like a skiff. You'd fly out, scout, and bring back word to the main ship, which was much larger. Not as fast, but equipped for longer distances and with better weapons."

As she stands, Jaime remains seated in his casual recline. He's seen machinery here that is far more advanced-- in its way, he supposes-- than what one might find in the Seven Kingdoms and so there's no cynicism, just speculation. His mouth twists, a hand gesturing with his palm open.

"Such a pity you've no such machine here. The stars seem to surest passage of escape."

She looks surprised, for a moment, then says, "I guess that's true. But I don't know where I'd go. It's vast, out there, and a lot of other plants - worlds - they aren't right for people to live on. The wrong kind of air, or no water, or no plants and animals to live on. I don't know where we are, even, so it'd be a gamble." Without an FTL, probably a futile one.

Unsurprisingly, Jaime has not thought long and hard on the precautions of space travel. Or the notion, even, of other planets; astronomy and star-gazing being the hobbies of Maesters, not aspiring knights. He is both unqualified but quite serious all the same when he shrugs and says; "There are times I'd take my chances."

"You sound like a man with a life worth getting back to," she comments, neither kind nor unkind. Sharon wonders sometimes if she should pretend to want to get home.

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I should have known (OPEN)

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