Milliways

[redintheledger]

Natasha is eighty-three. Old enough to be a grandmother. Old enough to be a great-grandmother, had the mother part had happened at all. Old enough, apparently, to acquire a certain degree of wisdom.

What she is doing at the moment isn't very wise.

She's sitting at the bar in Milliways, studying the bottles stacked up on the shelves. There is some logic: Milliways appeared in her apartment just when she was thinking that she'd really, really love to stop thinking, and it's a bar.

A bar at the end of the universe, where people from all times (like Nataliya Shostakova from 1952, whispers the annoyingly persistent part of her mind that won't let her forget it), so maybe they'd have something that'd get her drunk more easily than vodka.

Unfortunately for Natasha's drive for experimentation, another part of her is pointing out that getting drunk in a strange bar when she is freaked out over her memory is stupid.

But Natasha is eighty-three, and she's very, very tired of being careful when all she wants to do is not think for a few hours.

Comments

[katyafeline]

Evidently there was a mage-shaped hole in the universe centered right over the barstool to Natasha's left, because when there's a Katya in that spot, it's hardly surprising.

"Are we stalking them?" She leans over to ask, casually. "If so, I pre-emptively call dibs on all of the budweisers. Except the American one, that's just gross."

[redintheledger]

"They're all yours," she says. "I'm more...debating if I should be drinking anything."

[katyafeline]

"If you're here, and asking, you already know the answer to that question. The question is, what is stopping you?" Katya notes, sagely. "And there are good reasons and bad, of course."

[redintheledger]

She looks amused, briefly.

"It's a bad idea.







And I can't really get drunk anyway."

[katyafeline]

"Usually is. And that sounded like a challenge." Katya replies, grinning.

[redintheledger]

"It wasn't meant to," Natasha observes, although, well. She could be lying. Maybe it was.

"What would you recommend?"

[katyafeline]

"If it is because you cannot abide the taste of liquor, mixed drinks until you don't care - but if it is constitutional, there is always Atlantean." She is an expert in (not-quite-all-but-close) things alcoholic, with a PhD in hard drinking gained in Moscow, with a secondary PhD in multiuniverse alcohols from the University of Sentient Furniture.

"I really hope it isn't the former."

[redintheledger]

Pause.





"What's Atlantean?"

(That...probably answers the question)

[katyafeline]

"Wine of an ancient civilization, looks like something out of a very bad science fiction movie, hits like a pissed-off golem." Katya explains, as she hops the bar to go hunting for some. "There's actual warnings for normal people to not go drinking it for fear of instant liver failure."

[redintheledger]

Well, that sounds like it might do it.





Except that accepting it would be more than just an implication that she's not normal.

The woman turns into a tiger, she points out to herself.

"So, people who drink it are...who, exactly?"

[katyafeline]

"The stupid, the desperate, and those of us who don't feel like drinking all of the vodka bar can provide before having fun." Katya replies, peering over the edge of the bar to give Natasha a wink, the bottles in the wine cabinet clinking as she shifts through them. "Of course, if you want to go through all the vodka as well, that is fine with me, Comrade."

[redintheledger]

...

Fuck it.

"Shot of Atlantean it is," Natasha says, almost cheerfully.

And then,

"I haven't been a comrade in a while, Katya."

[katyafeline]

"I haven't been a comrade in a while, more's the pity." Katya sighs, setting out two lowball glasses and a bottle full of a faintly glowing yellowish liquid. "I'm still disappointed by that."

The portions she's pouring out could, technically, be called shots. If one were generous.

[redintheledger]

Her mouth twists a bit.

"I left."

She's very much not complaining about the size of the 'shots'.

[katyafeline]

"I watched them build the first McDonalds in Moscow." She retorts, setting the bottle between them. Now that's a depressing subject.

[redintheledger]

Natasha snorts, picking up a glass.

"Like they all hadn't fucked us over before then. Use up all of our trust, then die, and leave everyone who is left to the capitalist wolves."

He was unprofessional, but it's not as if she blames Markov for being bitter as hell, guarding the very people who were destroying their country.

His.

(She left.)

[katyafeline]

"Bah, it should have worked. The analysts were all very excited." Katya huffs, knocking back her portion, and hissing at the burn of it.

[redintheledger]

She doesn't knock her glass back. She takes a cautious sip first, and then a longer one.

Right, it's been a while since anything's burned like that.

"Well, it would have. Except then you had Stalin, and Khrushchev tried, but no, then everyone else just fucked it even further."

[katyafeline]

"Khrushchev would have had to be a god, or an Other, to fix the damage that was already there There is only so much one can do to hold back the incoming tide." The mage retorts, refilling her glass. "It was doomed from the start."

[redintheledger]

"Communism could have worked!"

She is not nearly depressed enough to admit anything else.

"But Stalin." Down the rest of the Atlantean goes.

"Do you have any idea how scared we all were? But we survived the war, we could have rebuilt everything.

We just weren't allowed."

This is stupid. So very, very stupid. But the thing about control, when it's finally told to go to hell, it's hard to get it back.

She pours herself another glass.

[katyafeline]

"How scared you all were? Imagine how an abandonment of faith in favor of science went over for us! There were wild vampires. Every night."

...

Honestly this would be more of a tragedy if Katya hadn't rather enjoyed running down wild vampires. Though a depressed populous surely hadn't helped anything for the Light.

[redintheledger]

"Vampires don't drag you away in the middle of the night for saying the wrong word," she snaps.

"Did you ever lie awake, trying to pretend you heard nothing as people vanished."

[katyafeline]

"No, I was the one trying not to vanish. Bloodsuckers weren't entirely particular whether they got human or Other." And she was short then, before she figured out how to make her shapeshifting ability work for her.

[redintheledger]

"Everyone was trying not to vanish."

This time, the shot just goes straight down.

"It should have been better after the war," she says, voice quieter. "I thought...it'd be better. We did all of those great things. How could it go back to how it was."

[katyafeline]

"There is always the human tendency towards the Dark, as there is always one towards the Light." Katya sighs, "Humans are not made to be one, or the other - even when it is in their best interests."