Cleaning out closets(Anna,cont.)

[Gordon McFadden]

The observation deck was the only place in this ship where Gordon could find some peace, away from all the noise, away from all of the commands, shouts, and laughter that this place seemed to carry. Everyone seemed so happy, so enraptured by the advances against R4, the advances in finding rifts, and whatever other advances had come about. What are their REAL motives? They seemed to all be silver figurines, frozen in faces of happiness and determination. Especially that little kid that runs around the place. She was probably the happiest of all of them(he hadn't seen the girl lately...maybe she was off this rock. Good for her). It all seemed too surreal for Gordon. They had to be using him for something...why else would they take a freak like him on board? He looked up through the clear glass above him and saw the stars that frequented the night sky and envied them. Giving off so much light, alone, bright, giving a way for travelers of space to see where they were going, truly free to make others lives better. What was he but a tool? Venia, R4, UGAP...they were all abusers of power and he the victim of such oppressive nature. He could hear footsteps behind him and he groaned outwardly, hoping the person behind him would leave. When the steps stopped, he turned around to see...
"Anna? You look better than you did a few hours ago. Make-up does wonders for you after a beatdown." That cocky facade that Gordon put up was still there, but a bit weaker, crumbling at the edges.

[~ ADMIN]

Gordon's abrupt exit earlier had left Anna curious. Considering she was supposed to be his superior, and him in her care, so to speak, she felt like she didn't know a lot about him, and she certainly hadn't made any effort to try. She'd been so caught up with her feelings for Ben, and the drama with Ally, that she'd neglected everyone else.
Obviously, she'd needed a shower and a change of clothes, then she'd retreated to her office to mooch over everyone's files again, especially Gordon's. But a file couldn't really tell you what a person was like, what their past was. She knew hers only scratched the surface.
Leaving her office, she'd sort of wandered aimlessly for a bit, until she realised what she doing.
It wasn't hard to find Gordon in the end, there was only really one place on the ship where people could get enough peace and quiet in order to think, or to just be alone.
"I'll take that as a compliment," she said, taking a seat beside him.
Glancing across at him, she said, "was keep warm really the best you could come up with before?" She nudged him, raising her eyebrow.

[Gordon McFadden]

"Oh shut it." He said playfully, nudging her back as he leaned forward in his seat, gaze locked in on nothing in particular. His mind was circulating with so many things he wanted to say at this point, so many questions he wanted to ask her about his use here, was he really here for...
"You know,when they picked me up off of the Backside, they told me I would be free of everything. Free of terrorist propaganda, free of genocidal missions, free of what held me down when I was rolling with R4. But they lied, Anna; it's all the same. You know it is. What we're doing here, chasing after terrorists, hunting them down. I've seen what UGAP has done to their prisoners and it makes me disgusted. Why am I fighting for UGAP? Why am I fighting for you? Why am I fighting at all?" It was obvious that his former occupation had tainted his perceptions on life, but still, he felt it was a valid line of questioning: why should he have to continue doing this? It wasn't exactly the easiest thing in the world to pick up an energy rifle every day and be expected to put your life on the line for the vague values UGAP stood for: "freedom", "opportunity". What were those anyway?
"I know you were a hard liner. I could tell from the way you fought. You had it rough too. Why are you fighting, Anna? Why aren't you out there, makin a living away from being captive?"

[~ ADMIN]

It was a hard question to answer.
"I suppose there are a lot of reasons why I'm fighting," she said, occasionally glancing at him as she spoke, "to do what's right by me, for justice. Mostly for justice. Regardless of what the UGAP say, we can make up our own decisions about what's right and what's wrong, whose orders we should follow to the letter, but never above our moral code." She shrugged her shoulders slightly, "I also didn't want to do nothing. I could have gone on to Oxford or wherever," yes, it still existed, "and studied science or engineering, but what could I have done with that? How would that have helped? Also, why should we trust other people to do the dirty work for us? When we can be out there doing it ourselves, making sure it's done the right way."
She'd thrown out a few rhetorical questions of her own there.
"I also wanted to be nowhere near my family," she admitted, "and joining the armed forces took me as far away from them as possible."
Giving him her full attention, she said, "why do you think you're fighting?"

[Gordon McFadden]

"Justice? The Alliance tells us that's what we're fighting for, but as you say yourself, we're fighting for our own personal justice. Caught in a whole lot of contradictions if you ask me." Gordon heard the question that he had asked himself when he had massacred a field of slaves on the moon of Junio five, asked himself that question when he leveled an energy rifle at a man pleading for his life...and he had never gotten an answer.
"I fight because I don't have a reason. I don't have any kind of reason for why I'm doing this other than this was what I was trained to do. The ghetto trained me to fight for survival, R4 wanted me to go biotic on people, and the Alliance wants me to go out and obliterate terrorists. It's all the same, don't you see that?! I've been fighting for twenty two years and I have nothing! Nothing! No family, no home, no kids. You have Ben, you have a possible family, a good position. What do I have? The ability to murder. Slam people through walls. That's all I was trained to do. All I might be good for." He sat back down in the chair, head hung. In that moment of vulnerability, Gordon was stripped of his prideful facade and revealed for what he really was inside: an emotionally chaotic who wanted nothing more than resolution.

[~ ADMIN]

Anna twisted herself towards him, bringing her legs up under herself as she kept looking at him. A guy had never been like this in front of her before. Ben generally closed up about his past, and her brothers and other guy friends all kept that same male bravado, 'I bury my issues' attitude, 24/7.
Gordon though, was clearly conflicted. His past and the people in it had screwed him up good and proper, rather like her.
"Yes, I see it," she said, "but despite what people may think, it's only us, ourselves, that can decide what we do, and why we do it. You always have a choice."
There was a pause, and she said,
"You've not just got the ability to kill, and a lot of questions. You've got me. I don't know how much that's really worth considering we were beating each other hell for leather a couple of hours ago, but yeah. I'm here, for you." Like she should have been from the beginning.
"You've done good work here, and I respect you for that."

[Gordon McFadden]

"Good work? Only thing I've done is managed to get you fired up about somethin and have you crunch my testicles so bad that I might have gone sterile." Gordon laughed slightly, but the laugh was the key: Anna had broken into his psyche as a person who was willing to sit there and listen, to allow him to voice concern without jumping all over him with judgmental attitudes. Like everyone else seemed to do.
"What DID you get angry about anyway? You looked like you were ready to bust heads back at the gym. Did I embarrass you that much?"

[~ ADMIN]

"Busting heads and taking names." She knew that wasn't the right saying, but whatever.
Chewing on her lip slightly, she averted her gaze into her lip. She'd told two people about her past now. Ben first, and he hadn't been entirely sure what to do with the information, then Ally, who had been more comforting, a lot more comforting. Anna was getting to the point now where she didn't know why it had to be such a secret? Maybe she'd be able to cope better if she was more open with the reasons why she sometimes did things that other people thought seemed out of character, crazy, or random.
"I didn't like feeling out of control," she said, pretty straightforward, "not because I'm a control freak. But, well, two people in my life took my control over my body away from me, violated it... and I haven't felt the same way about my body or other people controlling it since." It was a roundabout way of saying what had happened, that she'd been abused.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, she said, "so when you lifted me off the ground, I felt helpless, and upset. Like I did back when my brothers... yeah. So, I got angry. And well, you know the rest."
Brushing her hair behind her ear, and bit her lip again. "Sorry about that."

[Gordon McFadden]

Gordon shook his head, telling her:
"That's messed up. Totally messed up. Even I know not to...well." While he was a very abrasive and crude personality, he knew not to press this issue further, especially with someone who he was beginning to feel a little care for. Care in the sense that they were almost kindred souls, brought together by the heat of battle and the distraught of past trauma.
"Don't be sorry. You were expressing raw emotion, something that most of us don't want to express. Most people want to hide things. Let it all out, man. Let it all out." He sank back in his chair as he looked over at Anna. Boy she was pretty. But then again, those initial feelings of lust and passion he had had for her in the beginning(yeah I thought she was hot. Get off my case, ok?) were dissipating. She was a human being and he would treat her as such. He needed to get into the habit of doing that. Treating others like humans.
"I'll make sure to not go biotic on you next time. Do that on the bad guys." He gave her a small smile, said smile containing a trace of warmth. This would be the beginning of quite a relationship.

[~ ADMIN]

Let it all out? A smirk crept on Anna's face, "so I can kick your arse again if I want to?" she said, prodding him in the bicep. It was like poking a rock.
The last two times she had come out and told someone about what had happened, she'd pretty much dissolved into a teary mess, more so with Ally than with Ben. But for some reason, it hadn't been as hard this time. Maybe she was coming to accept what had happened after all these years.
She definitely still had far to go though.
"Yes, lift the bad guys up, spin them round, make them do pirouettes, whatever, just leave my two feet firmly on the ground." She smiled back, resting her arm across the top of the seat, leaning her head against her arm.
"What was it like working for R4?" she asked, adding, "you don't have to tell me." She was curious whether the group were as malicious as they painted themselves to be.

[Gordon McFadden]

"We were tools. All of us. They locked us in at our facility, conditioned us to be killers. We all hated each other, got after each other quite a bit. In fact, a few of my squadmates killed each other before my last assignment because one of them thought the other had stolen a piece of fruit from a locker. It didn't help that R4 encouraged this, thought it was good for us, sharpened our skills. All it did was cause us to not trust each other, to build up a whole lot of anger faster than you could shoot a pulse rifle. They gave us no cause for genocide other than the thrill of separating mind from body. Like I said, we were tools." His eyes seemed to glaze over for a moment, as if his memories were returning to haunt him, to draw him away from the present and throw him back into the past. Gordon quickly snapped back to reality, laughing slightly as he said:
"But that's all ancient history. History that deserves burying. That's why I'm here. Fresh start, redemption, all of that jazz the Alliance told me I was going to have when I stepped on board this thing. And ya know...maybe they weren't wrong." He rose from his chair, cracking his neck, the sound sharp and acute. Gordon then asked:
"Why are you asking me these things? Most people don't usually care about a crazy and very handsome former terrorist."

[~ ADMIN]

Anna laughed at his question at first, his ego 'shining' through after that moment of self-doubt, then concern.
"I think you answered your own question," she smirked jokingly, resting back against the seat and looking at him. "Nah," she said, before adding seriously, "because I care. Not just because I'm duty bound to, because I'm your superior officer, but I think you need someone to give you a run for your money on the mats every once in a while, keep you grounded. Might as well be me."
She smiled at him before, pursing her lips.
"I was also curious. We haven't really had any insight into the way R4 works, despite having another former R4 employee on board. We need all the information we can get if we're going to be able to bring them down, and that's what I want to do, eventually. They've caused way too much trouble, not to mention been a pain in my arse for months now. The sooner they're gone, the better."
The smirk crawled back a little, "that a good enough answer for you?"

[Gordon McFadden]

Gordon chuckled, responding:
"Yeah, good enough." A compulsive urge came over him, his mouth uttering a phrase that he hadn't used in a long while. It didn't want to come out at first, but it did, with a bit of clumsiness:
"Thank you." Gordon could feel a tiny pulse in his left ear, indicating his comm ringing. He answered:
"McFadden."
"Gordon, it's Michael." Michael Clarke?! The CAPTAIN?! What did he want?!
"What can I do for you, sir?"
"Come up to my office in the next hour. I'd like to speak with you about something."
"May I ask what this is about?"
"Just come on up, son. I'll explain when you get here. And don't dilly dally. I have a shuttle ride out of here in about an hour."
"Sir, I.." The call ended, leaving Gordon puzzled. He looked over at Anna and told her:
"Captain wants me to see him. Apparently I'm on official business. Unlike SOMEONE who wants to take a 'break' and freeze herself to death in Canada." Gordon began to walk out of the observatory, mixed feelings swirling inside of him. But the talk had helped. And Gordon, whether he knew it or not, had gained a friendship. Would that be enough?

-End-