Title: Lay Down Sally
Rating: PG-13
Characters are not mine I am just borrowing.
A/N: Written as a challenge from Jilly-Chan who wanted to see my take on a younger Sally.
There it was, her last day as a recruit. Everyone else was being escorted to his or her shuttle by a family member and she was alone, bag in hand. It wasn't terrible, and, yet, it was. Despite it all she had a small smile tucked at the corner of her mouth. She wasn't sure she'd ever be able to get rid of it, not really. After all the work that went into putting it there she wasn't sure she'd ever let go of it.
She took a breath and boarded her shuttle. She couldn't remember where she was headed and she wasn't sure she wanted to check her paperwork to remember just yet. As she sat down she heard one of the other recruits talking about a bar in town that served the best drinks.
A memory of her father weary from a day at his practice at the side bar in the den shaking up a cold batch of whiskey sours filtered through her mind. She watched on tip toes as liquid was dispersed into highball glasses and carefully garnished. He turned and winked at her. Knowing her better than she knew herself he poured orange juice into a martini glass with a Maraschino cherry and lime garnish and handed it to her. Never leaving her out, but leaving her out.
She shut her eyes. She didn't want to be thinking of such things, but it was the leaving. It was the making her own choices that made her remember. She took a deep breath. She wanted this. She wanted this chance to serve the Alliance and become a doctor, someday a doctor. Now she was just a medic. Now she was just a soldier who could heal as well as harm. Sometimes life handed her lessons sent in ridiculous packaging.
Learning that she'd get a better education as a soldier was a strange pill to swallow. Strange, because if her father had lived it might not have been a question she would have to ask herself. She just would have gone to some prestigious college and then medical school. She would have, but then her father, a cardiac surgeon, would die suddenly of a heart attack. How did things like that happen?
There where no easy answers.
The shuttle pilot's voice crackled over the intercom. She heard the words, but found them slipping away from her. She opened her eyes and watched the world below her disappear.
Her mother crying, crying like the world had ended, and it had. Never recovering, and sinking into herself leaving Sally alone.
Sally tried to recall her mother before that had happened. She was so cool and easy. She was so calm and took every emergency with care. She never lost her cool. Sally wondered what things her mother had been keeping underneath that exterior that had made her give up so completely once her father was gone. She wanted to know so she would never do it.
It was hard. She saw, when she looked in the mirror, a reflection of her mother's features with her father's eyes. She heard others comment about how cool she was, how collected and together in an emergency.
Pilots in training crashing, and she didn't even hesitate when she arrived with the rest of the recruits learning to be medics. She jumped right in. Everything she had been taught moved down into her fingers and she saved lives. And she lost lives. She'd never get used to losing lives. She hated that feeling of someone slipping away. She practiced and studied so hard to keep those instances small.
The shuttle was moving through the air now. It wouldn't be a long flight. Everyone else was talking. She just wanted to rest a bit, knowing that she was resting without resting. She was thinking, remembering…wanting.
Sally had always done well in school. She excelled at sciences, specifically biology. She wanted to be a doctor. Her mother didn't want to talk about it. She wanted to go into the military. Her mother stopped talking to her.
Sally refused to keep her emotions locked inside of herself, but remained private. If she wandered into the woods she could scream and scream, and feel blessed relief at having let it all go. She could cry and cry, and there would be nothing left, nothing inside her but a cool easy feeling.
At the academy there weren't any private places, not really. But there was a gym and punching bags, and a kick boxing instructor with dark hair, and eyes that saw right through her. Other recruits went out drinking in bars and hit dance clubs. She stayed in with a book of philosophy, psychiatry, or she went to the gym. She hit a bag. She ran a few miles. She…fell mercilessly to the advances of the kick boxing instructor, and that woman opened her up. But Sally found herself having to put herself back together again.
She looked out at the sky moving below her in the shuttle. How many women had taken her apart and left her to try and remember where everything went?
So far only two that had her forget for a moment where everything went. The rest…the rest…In high school she knew right away that she preferred women. She liked the soft that could be so dangerously hard. She was never unsure of herself and maybe that was why lovers left her in pieces. She knew what she wanted, they did not. They picked her apart to find some of themselves in her arms and when it wasn't there they left. At the end of high school she tried her hand on the opposite end. It left her feeling so empty. It was so much worse than being picked apart.
Cool. Easy. Her smile was described that way. She had long since stopped trying to protest the description. She knew herself really well. How could she not after remembering where all the pieces went so many times?
She was like her mother, on the outside. She found herself thinking herself like her father on the inside. And then, now, now that graduation had come and gone and she was flying off for her first real assignment, she realized she was just herself. She was Sally Po, medical officer, and aspiring doctor. There was no one else for her to be.
The drink cart rumbled along side her and she looked up into the eyes of the young put upon stewardess. She smiled and ordered an orange juice. The young woman took a deep breath and found a smile to return; blushing furiously when Sally took the drink, thanked her, and gave her a wink.
Sally took a sip from her drink and reached out to grab her paperwork. Her first assignment was at Lake Victoria. She titled her head and nodded. It would be an interesting base, being such a mix of Alliance and OZ specials. She wondered if she'd meet anyone interesting there, and said goodbye one finale time to the person she had been to make room for the person she really was.
End.