InsaneJournal

Current mood:	creative
Current music:	Blue Öyster Cult, Les Invisibles
Entry tags:	[fic], alternate universes, happy, i'd rather be dancing, in another world, me, rath creations

[Writing] Somewhere, in a parallel universe...
Writing! I'm going to take it as a good omen that I was feeling creative enough to dash this off. ^_^

***

She looks around the stately room, with its incongruous table full of tea urns and bowls of peanuts and pretzels and related things that she doesn't eat anyway. The walls are out of a manor house, the carpet is out of an office. Camford colleges give you weird cognitive dissonance.

"...if you'd like to say a few words?"

Oh, yeah. She'd almost forgotten about this part. She cradles the huge bunch of severed vegetative genitalia that they've pressed into her hands, silently apologising to the fluffs of carnations and delicate spikes of leaves for this death she wouldn't have wished on them; she's trying not to think about the hideous ornamental plate they've also given her, except in terms of its likely worth on eBay. Her eyes flick around the room, quickly taking in her erstwhile colleagues where they gather round her. They look like creatures from another species to her, their costumes strange, their mannerisms alien. She's never understood how they work, never been able to fake it.

Luckily, after today, it won't matter any more.

"Thanks," she begins. "I'm really touched that you've all come to say goodbye. Thank you, it means a lot to me. I've really enjoyed working with you all, and I'm sorry to leave." If she doesn't stop lying through her teeth in a minute, the Lords of the Higher are going to overhear and revoke her ops license, seriously. She moves on to a safer topic. "I know a lot of you are quite surprised that I'm leaving, especially since I haven't really talked about where I'm going or what I'll be doing next. I've had a lot of people asking me what my new job is going to be." She smiles. They smile back, politely inquisitive. Some of them, and she never stops being surprised by this, look like they genuinely care.

Let's see how that holds up. "Well, I guess, since this is my last day, I should really tell you." Her tone is light, playful. "I'm not actually taking a regular job after this at all."

The curious looks get more curious. Is she going backpacking round the world? Has she inherited her great-uncle's fortune? Is she marrying a secret lover and jet-setting off to the Bahamas? What's it going to be?

"Ever since I was sixteen, I've been enlisted in the reserves of the Royal ADF - the Arcane Defence Force." She's grinning, now, the pride welling up in her as the words pass her lips for the first time in any place so public. A cadet reservist isn't supposed to tell anyone their rank or position, because they have to be kept safe under the secrecy wards; but as a Defender Second Class with fresh enlistment stripes glowing just below her collarbone, albeit hidden by her shirt right now, she can declare her name and rank anywhere she sees fit.

And frankly, that's the coolest thing ever. "Four weeks ago I was called up to the ADF active ranks. I'm being posted to the North Yorkshire Coastal Defence Station as of next Monday. So yeah, if you wonder where I'm going, I'll be somewhere on the northeast coast, protecting all of you guys from stuff you're better off not knowing about." The grin hasn't gone as she waits for them to react.

Unsurprisingly, it seems like they haven't a clue what to make of it. Some of the smiles have crystallised like glass, stuck to their owners' bewildered faces; some have broken into polite chuckles of disbelief. One or two of them show a sudden hurt, a sadness - for a moment she sees wistful children looking out of adult faces, the eyes of those who, in some half-held memory of youthful belief, wish that her strange fiction could be the truth. Then again, if they'd wanted this to be their truth, maybe they should have tried a bit harder to keep the doors of their minds wedged open twenty years ago when the recruiting sergeants would have been looking for them.

But the oddest reaction she gets is a very level look from grey-haired old Dicky, who's been running the place with military precision for years. Wing Commander Dicky, with his straight spine and archaic chivalry and a kind word for everyone but seemingly especially her - oh. Of course. That "RAF" on his favourite tie isn't "Royal Air Force" at all, is it. She catches the former Astral Flight officer's eye and gives him a grateful smile, and he winks at her. Congratulations, lass, she hears.

Thank you, sir, she sends back, and he grins and for a moment she sees the man he must have been in his prime, a dashing young hero in the Astral Flight's blue and silver with his wing-topped cane under his arm. And then the vision is gone and he's just Dicky, disappearing from her line of sight as others crowd in to shake her hand and congratulate her and ask her no, really, what are you doing next, then? laughing as they pretend to get the joke she didn't make. She shakes hands and juggles her bunch of flowers and grits her teeth when a couple of the girlier ones lean in for air-kisses and then abruptly it's over, people filtering away as their desks beckon, and that's it, she's free.

As she comes down into the Court a moment later, into the bright bluster of a wild summer's day, the wind picks up abruptly and tries to playfully bodyslam her off the steps. She laughs and sidesteps with it, feeling her hair whip and her shirt flutter in the sudden blow, and looks up just in time to see a startled pigeon go whizzing down the wind at a pace that must be making its small birdy stomach flip over. One of the College's resident crows, much more in control of itself, dips sharply above her and salutes her with a peremptory caw.

"Now you guys," she says out loud, smiling at it, "I am going to miss."

While far be it from a crow, of course, to ever show anything other than superiority to a human, even one wearing ADF stripes; she's fairly sure she heard a terse "~likewise~" in there somewhere.

***

Laters,
Rath