3rd person P.O.V
Tally focus:
Raelle woke up when she was just about to swap over with Abigail, they had decided to swap every two hours so that they could both eat and sleep and so at least one in the unit was attending any lessons and could take necessary notes for the other two. This meant now that Raelle was awake she was to head right to Sarah's office. Just hours ago she would have been jumping for joy to see Sarah but now she crept in anticipation, unsure of the unit's future in the military. She suspected that even her own marital status would not help her in any way, especially as the war college administration board most likely did not know of her relationship with the general.
She walked up to the front of the administrative building this time and made her way to the Generals' offices' at the end of the hall just like she had described was Sarah's office, the door to the reception room open, the aides bent over their desks, the main office door cracked open, she could see Devon's face standing in the doorway looking out at the hall. The sight of a friendly face eased Tally's apprehension, she sped up slightly, mindful to stay quiet so as to not disturb the occupants of the other offices lining the hallway. She walked past the first doorway and Devon opened the door completely to allow her to walk right past the three aides arranged between the two doors. Two of the three completely ignored her, the third looked up from her desk at her but Tally could see that she quickly looked back down after noticing the glare on Devons face.
Tally entered the main office and thanked Devon quietly, Sarah was clearly the general currently writing on some papers at the desk, this left Tally to stand at attention opposite the desk, waiting for Alder to look up at her or acknowledge her. It didn't take long, less than a minute, for Alder to look up. "Private Craven, please sit." She said in the cool tone that Tally was not used to experiencing but she still obeyed, feeling the biddies displeasure of Sarah's treatment at her. She could do nothing about it though, it had been part of the promise they made before Sarah left the compound, there would be times when Sarah would not be her wife but be her general and it looked like this was one of those times.
"I need you to tell me exactly what happened from the moment you discovered Collar was missing," Alder said, sitting up straight in her chair. Tally recounted the story, including comments on Raelle's behaviour over the last few days as well. She choked up a bit when she got to the bit where they had to pull her out of the water and drag her back to the truck. She fought back tears, she would not cry right now, not in front of her commanding officer, her wife yes but not her CO.
Alder nodded at Elise who was sitting adjacent to the desk with a pen and notebook, she had been taking notes. Tally watched as Sarah undid her jacket and moved around the desk to sit next to her, the raven haired witch put her hand in hers and squeezed it, "Let it all out Tally, this is a safe space." Sarah said gently. Tally threw herself at the other woman, sobbs racking her body.
"It was horrible, finding the empty salva tins, not knowing where exactly she would be. Her lips were blue Sarah, lips aren't meant to be blue." Tally cried, feeling a hand in her hair and several more hands resting on her back, she drew comfort from the women in the room. Tally sniffled and wiped her eyes, she didn't want to look like she had been crying.
"I needed to ask you what happened so that I could line everything up with Sergeant Briedy's account. I'll need to ask Collar and Bellweather the same thing, but like you,I'll ask them separately." Sarah said as Tally said up in her own chair properly, still keeping grip on Sarah's hand. "We'll walk to the infirmary together once you are calm enough," Sarah said. "We don't need to give those three outside any more reason to gossip do we?" she joked, making Tally laugh and smile. She nodded and wiped her eyes again, making sure that no more tears had slipped through. She looked over and saw all of the biddies standing behind her, she whispered her thanks to them before standing and offering a hand down to help Sarah up. She let go of her hands once the other woman was standing and moved forwards slightly to hold one to a uniform jacket, slowly she moved to the collar of the jacket and did the fastenings working her way down to the bottom of the jacket. "You know, I could have done that myself." Sarah said through a smirk.
"I know I just, I wanted to do something for you, even if it's something small." Tally said, looking the older witch in the eyes smiling.
Sarah picked up Tally hands from where they were still grasping at her jacket and held them both up. "Have I told you I love you yet?" she said with a genuine gleeful smile.
"You have, and I'll gladly hear it everyday because I love you as well." Tally responded, dipping forwards to press a quick kiss to Sarah's lips before moving towards the door. "Now, don't we have a couple other people to talk to?" Tally said with a grin and Sarah and the biddies gracefully scrambled to the door.
The walk to the infirmary was a strange one, the few officers they ran across gave odd looks to the group, and several who were in the gossip mills would be heard whispering after they had passed. Neither paid any attention to anyone else but made sure to not show anything other than a Private and the General walking across base directly to the Infirmary. Tally held open the infirmary doors for the group entering after the biddies seeing her sisters faces relax slightly once they caught her eye.
Alder focus:
Abigail Belllweather's account was very much the same as Tally's and Sergeant Briedy's, it was Raelle Collar's account that differed and was missing parts of information which the fixer on duty told her that it was bereavement amnesia, a rare response to a trauma such as losing a loved one where memories surrounding the grief of the loved one are not remembered accurately or sometimes at all (idk if this is an actual thing but this is an AU so for this fic it is.) while this was unfortunately not the first time a cadet had done this or something similar, it was still painful for her and everyone involved, the know that they thought of being locked into service with no choice would push someone to do such a thing to avoid being killed in battle or from injuries.
Sarah wanted badly to reassure Raelle that Scylla was alive but that defeated the purpose of faking the spree infiltrators death and put a stop to the plans to ship her off to military prison somewhere in the caribbean. She knew that she could not breathe a word of Scylla's continued existence to anyone, it was just another military secret that would be buried with her when the government got sick of her and forced her retirement. It didn't get any easier keeping secrets, secrets that were taught as face, half truths and downright lies taught as history to the children, twisted information, fabricated fact designed by the American government to show the country and its civilian leaders in a positive light and to get the witches only enough praise so that the civilians didn't kill and replace them all, but to also keep control over the witches by making it nearly impossible for them to find another job after their mandatory military service.
She knew that the unit would be shunned by the rest of their class for this and judged very harshly by the war college council, there was nothing she could do at that point to help them other than advise them to keep their heads down and follow every order to the best of their ability. She left the trio in the infirmary as she walked back to her office, there was paperwork to do, training for herself and the biddies and meetings to schedule. She wouldn't normally train with the biddies in hand to hand and weapons, mostly it was seed work, but with raising tensions between Russia and China and the worsening nature of the Tarim she felt it worth enough to squeeze in some hand to hand and weapons training for herself, it had been a few months since she had trained and while the biddies kept her in excellent shape fighting would exhaust them in the battle field which was a danger to her, them and anyone else she was fighting alongside.
Alongside all of her day to day obligations she also had to finalise the plans for City Drop for the basic's class it never fell on the same day twice but was always after at least 6 months of training, Anacostia had put forwards the first day after their Salva training, in years pervious it had been at least a week after Salva training but things were getting worse, Spree attacks more frequent and with the information Anacostia had managed to get from Ramshorn they were planning more attacks. City Drop was something she loathed, while they did their best to make it as accurate as possible it could never prepare the privates for the eventuality of getting attacked by civilians because the work ran through their blood, of losing a sister in the battlefield and not knowing for days. To be within an inch of death itself and not knowing if someone could save you. They were lucky this year that Izadora's linking class was before Salva training, so they would be able to help their own units and other units during the exercise as an army should do, she despised how much of basic training was framed as a competition, but it was necessary to get the best from the recruits.
City Drop hand never and would never be a competition, yes there were rankings to help the war college council decide who was worth a place and had the skills and determination to improve but she would never allow it to be treated as a competition with a winner and a loser, in War there was no solo winner only a winning army. This exercise was detrimental to teaching them that, and those that did not learn would have their one way ticket to the front lines as war meat.