Drunkard 10 Liar Duet

a/n: Case isn't quite ready to sing.

All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, which means they are free from blame here. Edited because I CAN'T SPELL SYLVALUM.

"Tell me about it."

Case stared across at Lila. There was no way she was going to explain the details to anyone, not even to her boss. Former boss. Untrustworthy, unstable, skating by on connections and the city's lack of better options. So, basically, a more successful version of Case. The only sound in the room was a brittle ticking coming from a medallion on the wall. Case glanced at it, seeking a distraction. One of the pointers on its surface twitched. She turned away quickly.

Case could neither look at Lila nor let her eyes stray far from the silent woman. She shrugged helplessly. "There's nothing that needs explaining. I understand if you can't help." When Lila didn't reply, the silence returned, broken only by the ticking. Case glanced around. She shrugged. She sighed. "I din't mean anything by what I said out there. I just need help to, ah, convince someone that they got something wrong." Case's words speeded up. "It isn't even lying. I'm only telling the truth, and I don't even care what they decide. But they gotta stop thinking what they've been thinking." She shut her mouth. Had any of that made sense? Case wasn't sure.

Lila rubbed her face tiredly. "This has to do with Evans. Might as well say it, Case."

"No," Case said too quickly. She shrugged again. "It's just a thing I need help with."

"You dragged him off last night. I don't know him as a customer much, but he seemed way off. Alexa does know him, and she was worried. You and him seemed pretty friendly during the summer and you haven't changed your shirt today. Evans." Lila didn't look tired anymore.

Case frowned miserably. "So what?"

"When did you last team with him?"

Case tried to pretend she had to think about it. "A couple weeks, maybe." She ducked her head, but after a moment her eyes returned to Lila.

Lila was not smiling. "Oh, honestly, Case. Give it up. You came to me for help, and I want to do it, even if you really suck at asking. But you suck at lying worse."

"You'd be surprised," Case said, raising her chin slightly.

"And you'd be surprised how NOT surprised I'd be." Lila shot a pointed grin at her, and then the grin snapped out of existence. "For example, your neck."

Case touched her throat quickly. "I thought no one would notice."

"Those marks are going to take professional care. At least we don't bruise anymore. Who did it?"

"No one. Myself. It was an accident. He didn't mean anything by it." Case tried to stop talking, but Lila kept being silent and the only thing that Case could do was keep speaking. "He was holding me too tight, so I peeled him off. Nothing bad."

"Nice kind of an accident. If he's 'accidentally' hurting people, BLADE needs to step in."

"I told you. I did it to myself." Case gestured, hooking her fingers toward her neck. It didn't seem to reassure Lila in the slightest.

More silence, more ticking.

Case noticed Lila's right hand feinting towards the desk drawer that held the bottle, but Lila pulled it back quickly. She played with the empty glass instead, spinning it slowly in looping circles on the desktop. Case wished Lila would go ahead and pour herself another shot, maybe two. From Case's experience during all the times they closed the station, Lila tended to ignore people's failings better after a few drinks.

The twirling stopped. "Look, Case, I am done with hints and whispers, but so help me, I will make it my life's mission to find out every little thing about what is going wrong with Gwin Evans. I'll start with asking my customers, move on to his division, aim towards his leader, what's her name?" She flicked a questioning glance at Case.

Case was pretty sure Lila knew exactly who Gwin's team leader was. She blinked at Lila.

"I'll ask the Commander." Lila looked sad for one fleeting moment, then her face grew firm. Her eyes drilled into Case. "I'll ask Eleanora."

There was no good answer to that. It was all Case could do to beg her not to. So she just sat and took it, sucking up the silence around them. Then Lila sighed and the spell was broken.

xcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcx

Lila wanted to slap herself. She deserved it. A minute ago she had Case perfectly positioned, she was sure of it, and then Lila had let herself start talking. Which led to her blurting out a threat long before it was ever necessary. Worse, it was such an obviously false threat, even if Case was momentarily too scared to see it, because there was no way Lila was saying boo to Eleonora for the foreseeable future. That's what the move to a new station and today's abandoned meeting were all about: not talking to people like Eleonora. Or the Commander. Lila sighed unevenly and was careful not to reach for the bottle again. She ran a finger inside the lip of the empty glass, catching a hint of moisture, then licked her finger clean. Being out of the game was no excuse for being bad at it.

"I could pour you another," Case said with too much eagerness.

"The one you poured was generous. Thanks for doing that. Sorry you had to watch me drink it like a baby."

"Maybe you should get a sippy cup, like the littlepon have." Case cracked a grin that was lopsided with fear.

Lila snorted a half-laugh. "Take it up with L. Maybe you can make some credits on the idea. Way too many people would be into that. Me, Frye, ..." Case flinched and looked away.

Lila sighed yet again and leaned back more comfortably in her chair.

"Let's try it another way first. Maybe I don't even need to ask." Lila kept her voice soft and almost dreamy. She gazed into the middle distance, only flicking the occasional look at Case as she went on. "Let's see. From the shape Evans was in, he's been going off the rails for a while. On the Whale, it would have taken a minimum of two weeks to get that broken, probably closer to a month. On Mira? Well, BLADEs get scuffed a little faster, but Evan struck me as pretty steady." Lila checked on Case quickly. Much less rigid now, and maybe less afraid. The girl had almost nodded in agreement with the last statement. Interesting, thought Lila, and useful.

"So, given what a decent BLADE he is," said Lila, scattering a little more praise to calm Case before the next bit, "I'll still guess this has been going on for at least three weeks. But you weren't around three weeks ago. You were finishing a long stay in the Mimeosome Maintenance Center." Lila closed her eyes and fluttered a palm. "Don't worry, I'm not stalking you. I happened to call you up in the hopes you'd take pity on us and fill in one evening. The Center said something about you still being in for a few more days. The operative word being 'still'. I got a little curious, only enough to hear you'd be okay and had been there several days already. Which brings us to the original time frame: four weeks."

Lila rocked forward and started playing with the glass again, careful not to look at Case. "What happened four weeks ago to put you in the MMC?"

"I got injured. I'm fine now," Case said in a small voice, swallowing several times.

"Where? Noctilum?" Lila thought it wasn't a bad guess, considering the work Reclaimers had been doing there.

Case shook her head and said in a smaller voice, "Sylvalum."

"Ah. Sylvalum." Now it was Lila's turn to swallow hard. She repeated it slowly. "Four weeks ago in Sylvalum. Don't tell me you were part of that whole ..." Lila's voice drifted off.

"Yeah."

Lila tried to keep the words casual. "I heard everyone was jumping into that fight. A whole wave of enemy. I think the ECP fixed the numbers at over 400, closer to 500. How much of it did you see?"

"We were the ones that spotted them. Or they spotted us."

Lila shook her head. She didn't like what she was thinking, but she had to make sure. "Were you teaming with Evans, part of a mixed group or something?"

"No. Pure Reclaimer."

"Anyone I know?"

"Probably not. Just some Center kids." Case did that shrug that she thought made her look smaller.

"Ah." Lila liked her thoughts even less, especially since the word "expendable" was rearing its ugly head. She'd keep that one to herself. "Who was your team leader?"

"I was."

Lila looked at Case with surprise. It didn't change her hunch, made it worse actually, but still it made her happy to hear it.

"You're surprised. You think it was a bad idea." Case's face was hardening.

"I'm surprised it's taken them this long to trust you. You're good." Lila considered the setup out loud, leaving out the one ugly word. "An away mission for a rookie leader and three new citizens."

"No one calls u- ... them that."

Lila chose to ignore Case's hesitation. "I'm trying to change it. What was the mission?" No reply. This time, Lila was going to wait it out if it required stapling her lips shut. She'd count the seconds until her clock batteries ran out, until her mim ran out of juice, until Mira started to explain itself, until...

Case shifted suddenly. Lila was afraid she was going to stand up and go, but she had adjusted her posture and was now sitting straight in a way that any service board would approve of. Her eyes were closed but her head was up, her fingers straight along her legs, her feet flat and steady. I'm no officer, thought Lila, but if this helps her, I can play along. "Please explain the details of the mission," she said smartly.

This time she didn't have to wait. Case unloaded it all.

a/n: Nope. Got nothing. Wait. Lila has personal experience with people becoming unhinged on the Whale, see Twitchy Tales of the Whale/3/Broken.

Next up: I've run out of stalling tactics. Will we finally FINALLY get to the deets?