milliways_bar | (no subject)

[OOM: History will one day remember it as the last major offensive of the war, but for those who live through it there is only one thing to remember: death. So much death.]

The Makita who trudges into the bar today is almost unrecognizable as the girl who left only a few days ago. Her clothes and face are still spattered with the blood and grime of days of fighting in the streets, but that isn't uncommon for her.

No, the difference is that this Makita is hollow-eyed, almost empty. Her steps are slow and heavy, her eyes are blank, and she doesn't even appear to be aware that she's back in Milliways at all. A close look at her face will reveal the twin streaks of oddly clean skin running down her cheeks; the path the tears have scoured out.

She's not crying now. She has no tears left.

Makita has been many things in her life, but broken has never been one of them. Until now.

[This post open for days and days as it's sort of important to Makita, and likely to go slowtime since I'm still traveling. But don't let that deter you from tagging.]

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There's a man. A big man, a soldier, but kind when it suits him and it's needed. He held a young girl once as she cried after her first kill, and more than that, he knows what it is to see just one death too many. He knows what it does to people.

He approaches, carefully, and drapes a blanket around her shoulders.

Her entire body twitches, shudders really, as the blanket settles over her. It's a reflexive move, one that would normally involve pushing away the unasked for help. But today... she's too tired. In fact she's not even conscious of the additional weight and warmth.

To those who know Makita it's that utter lack of awareness that screams something is very, very wrong.

"--Kita," says Plourr, and she's up and swiftly headed toward the girl, abandoning her table and her datapad and her lunch. "Hey, Makita."

He doesn't know her that well, but the utter lack of awareness isn't a good sign in anyone.

"Can you hear me, lass?"

"Kita?" He hasn't seen her in a while. In fact, he's given her a lot of room, knowing that he can't replace her father, that sometimes it's better to let others keep an eye on someone you care about. But the way she looks...he can't leave it for Steph or Mel or Goldie.

Esfir Shostakovna was just a little girl when the Nazis came to Stalingrad. But she lost her father, her mother; she remembers being hungry and cold; she remembers that look, with the mud and the blood.

Stalingrad had not been a happy place in the winter of 1942-43.

So the small woman is up and walking towards her, a hand just gently touching her arm.

The sound of a voice, especially one with an odd accent, startles her into awareness. Makita shudders one more time before looking up, eyes blank.

"Yes," she answers flatly.

Makita's working on auto-pilot. One foot in front of the other, and each step the long, high movement one uses to get through snowed terrain.

The blood spattered across her isn't her own, but the shell-shocked look in her eyes might not make that immediately obvious.

Makita doesn't respond, or even stop her blind trudge forward. That, more than anything else, suggests just how messed up she is at the moment.

It really does.

Well, probably not harm in attempting to steer her to a table. Table means a seat, which means get at least the outer garments off and new ones on and warm food.

Four long strides forward and Plourr is an immoveable force directly in Makita's path; she puts big hands on Makita's biceps, bends down to her eye level, and says, "Makita, I need to know if you can hear me."

Kriff are her arms cold under Plourr's fingers.

The voice penetrates the fog wrapping Makita's mind, even if the words don't seem to make any sense. She looks at Plourr blankly, eyes cloudy with the fatigue of intense exertion and lack of sleep. To whatever degree the girl is conscious, it's sheer willpower keeping her going. Most people would have collapsed by now.

And judging by the subtle tremors running down Makita's arm, even she's close to that point.

Plourr makes a snap decision.

She scoops Makita up into her arms as if she weighs nothing, and heads straight for the bar.

"Good. Now, you're not well. You need me to find anyone?"

He runs through the questions he could ask. "Are you okay?" No, she's clearly not. "What happened?" War. "Can I do anything?" No.

He steps closer and just stands there for a moment and finally says, "do you need anything?"

Makita struggles against the unexpected grab. It would be violent if she weren't tired and hungry and completely drained of adrenaline. Instead it only makes her look more pathetic.

Her bright green eyes blink slowly, emptily, as she tries to process his question. Eventually she figures out what he wants to know, but she's too tired to shake her head so she simply mutters, almost inaudibly, "'m fine."

That's clearly a lie.

"No, lass, you're not. You need a good night's sleep, if nothing else."

He's considering carrying her to the infirmary.

His voice draws her attention, but the look she turns on Alex is utterly devoid of recognition. Her eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep and the pupils over-dilated from too much stress.

Makita doesn't let herself be steered if only because she's not nearly aware enough of what's going on to 'allow' anything, but Esfir's firm touch is enough to get her to automatically follow where the other woman leads. She's still moving her legs in the awkwardly high steps of someone trudging through snow.

She doesn't have the energy to argue. She doesn't have enough energy to look like she wants to argue. She also doesn't look like she could put up much of a fight of he picked her up, even if she wanted to.

And now that she's stopped, no longer moving inexorably forward, she looks like shes maybe a minute or so from collapsing.

"You poor kid," he mutters. He moves closer but doesn't dare touch her. "It got worse, didn't it?"

"Easy, easy," she mutters. She sounds more like she's talking to a wounded animal than to a person; she feels like it, too.

A swift, murmured conversation with the bar, and then she heads for the couch in front of the fireplace. Times like these, she hates that Makita prefers the bar to a room, but she doesn't want to freak her out any more than she obviously already is.

"C'mon, little thuvasaur. We're gonna sit down."

While she doesn't stop struggling, it becomes weaker and weaker. It's just reflex, with no real thought behind it. Most of her growing calm is simple exhaustion, but some of it is the growing warmth of being near the fire.

It won't be long before she heats up enough to start shivering.

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