dog_eat_dog | IC Inbox

Hange accepts the rebuff amiably. The nice thing about Tess is she's another human, another adult, another woman from a meanspirited and hardbitten world. She is not Hange's inmate and Hange is not the one who must worry over her in that sense.

"Love troubles, huh? Aheheh. There's always a lot of that going around here."

"Ridiculous, isn't it. All this space and time stuff, alternate universes and mind-warping, sometimes we're on a train and sometimes we're raising eggs, and there's still juuust enough time for down-to-earth drama."

She passes her glass between her hands.

"Guy I was seeing wants to take a break, and then my partner showed up when all the people were getting switched around."

"He was disruptive, then? To your guy?"

Erwin did not give a shit about the network and did not make himself known there.

"I don't think they met each other, it was just real whiplash for me," she replies. "Moron warden, on the other hand, did talk to my moron partner, and neither of them really enjoyed that conversation, so... thanks guys."

She raises her glass in mock toast.

"How about yours?"

Hange snorts. Moron warden and moron partner, it's funny!

"I... Erwin was the one who came in my stead. My commanding officer."

Former, actually, but we don't want to talk about that.

"He didn't touch any of anyone's communications, but I know he wouldn't have wanted to disrupt... well, anything. Anything I was working on. He was always supportive in that way."

"Extremely good pick on the Admiral's part, then," Tess replies. Oh, to not be enmeshed in drama. "Clean, responsible, hits the ground running and doesn't ask stupid questions. You lucked out."

"That's Erwin down to the bootlaces. Hah. He was always like that. An excellent commanding officer, truly a great man."

"God, it's good to have guys like that." And teasing: "You never dated?"

"Haha! Erwin, or in general?"

The laugh is genuine.

"It's not really a priority for me, either way. People get distracted by romance. It's also not the best idea to date your fellow soldiers..."

“Sure, it’s a distraction, but it’s motivating,” she replies, with a flash of a grin. “And I’ve heard that too, but no one’s going to get you or what you do like someone else in the same line of work would. I couldn’t have someone at home shitting himself worrying if I’d make it home.”

"Ties like that warp people's priorities from where they should be. Most people don't have the grit to watch their romantic partner die and still prioritize the good of the whole... the good of humanity."

Certainly not me, is Tess's immediate thought, but then again, she never prioritized the good of anyone but her own. Fuck them, got hers.

"You don't think it's motivating, makes you work harder when the people you want to protect are right by your side?"

"Wanting to protect someone doesn't necessarily go hand in hand with putting a dick in them. Or a pussy on them."

Hange shrugs.

"And there might be something to be said for having a partner who was sheltered from the war. A beacon to return to. It could help with compartmentalization. I can't say that for sure, I suppose."

"Works different for different people, I guess," Tess replies. "Depends on where you live, too. If there was a safe place to stash someone, sure. If we're both going to be in danger, anyway, might as well together."

"No true safety existed within the walls! For most of my life. The inevitable end to any wall is its collapse, after all..."

Her glass is rapidly emptying out. Hange studies it, melancholic.

"Wasn't it similar in your home? Or not?"

"Oh, pretty much exactly that," she replies. "But safety's relative. Being in a gated apartment complex surrounded by soldiers inside a wall is safer than anywhere outside the wall."

"Did your walls ever collapse?"

"When downtown got bombed a number of years ago, a couple falling buildings took down chunks of wall, I guess, but they were patched up quick," she replies, shaking her head. "Bigger problem is people sneaking in and out, bringing the infection in."

"Haha! I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but - someone bombed your downtown enough for a wall breach? I imagine they topped the wanted list for a while after that."

"Funny story," she replies, "the military did that. They thought if they narrowed our living area down to the North End, they could carpet bomb downtown and hopefully kill off all the infected living there."

"Ohhh! Ohhh, that is ruthless!"

Hange sounds not approving, but impressed. Intensity always makes an impression on her, whether it's noble or horrid.

"That's - haha - we'd have a proportion of politicians who thought that was a bang-up idea! Did it work?"

"It did a pretty good job," she agrees. It was horrific at the time, listening to the explosions some miles away, but so much has happened that it feels smoothed over, just another bad time. "We definitely saw a drop in outbreaks. It didn't last, though. Can't cure Infection with bombings."

"And I'm sure the civilian casualties slaughtered by their own government weren't soon forgotten by those who survived them... at least if your people were anything like mine."

"Oh, definitely not, so we have a fuckton of activists and terrorists trying to liberate from them constantly," she replies. "But what do you do? The Quarantine Zone is a place to live. Can't turn up a place to live."

Hange taps her glass against the table a couple times, mulling her response over.

"About ten years ago now, the walls experienced an attack... we lived in three walls, you see? Concentric rings. The outermost wall was breached and the territory between the middle and outer wall became impossible for humans to inhabit. It was a crushing blow to us.

The winter after Wall Maria's collapse, the monarchy ordered a quarter of our population outside. It was billed as a 'resettlement effort' but everyone with a functioning brain knew that in actuality, it was an effort to toss people out of the lifeboat to make it more comfortable for the rest. Everyone lost someone in the exodus. Friends, family. And out of the two hundred fifty thousand who left, about one hundred survivors returned to us."

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