fandomhigh | Teamwork, Monday, Period 2

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Teamwork, Monday, Period 2

The class met at the edge of the causeway this morning, where a portal was scheduled to appear in a matter of minutes. Jack kept her remarks brief.

"It's Veterans Day, so you guys don't get a normal class. I booked us a portal to the Mall in Washington, D.C.," she said. "Once we get there, we're going to the Vietnam Memorial. It's a big black wall with names of dead soldiers carved in it. Might not sound like much, but some of the best people I've ever known have ended up names on walls like this. There's always some stupid war to kill more good people."

She paused there, brushing her hair out of her face.

"Some people like to leave flowers or notes at a place like this. Some just want to walk around. As long as you're respectful, that's fine, but if you are a disruptive jerk I will have your ass. Questions?"

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Like a veteran.

Gertrude Yorkes

Cade

Theo Langstrom

Mercy Thompson

Listen to Jack, ask questions if you have any, and maybe enjoy the surprise field trip.

You have most of an hour, which is plenty of time to see the memorial -- with a little extra for walking around the Mall, if you want.

Theo had never been here. He'd been on the opposite coast and coming out here just hadn't been possible so he was taking his time and checking things out.

Ange and Dev were unusually quiet which he thought was a good thing right now.

Jack paused once they got out of the portal back on the island, drawing deep and steady breaths. Stuff like this was maybe a little close to the surface for her.

"If anybody wants to talk about a veteran they knew, now's a good time for it. Doesn't need to be somebody who died in some war with a name, as long as they fought. If not -- see you next week."

Edited 2013-11-11 20:03 (UTC)

"Does it still count if they fought on the losing side?" Cade asked quietly.

"Sure. Not like anybody signs up wanting to lose," Jack said, eying him carefully. She had noticed the memorial trip hadn't been easy on Cade, either. "Talk."

"In that case, my dad, my uncle, two of my grandfathers, one of my grandfather's dad, mom, cousins, aunt and uncle, and pretty much on back until you can't find my family any more," Cade said. "We're all veterans. Didn't do us any good."

Edited 2013-11-11 20:23 (UTC)

"But you all keep signing up," Jack noted. "How come? Habit, stupidity, what?"

"Yeah," Cade said shortly. "A bit of both, I think. It's why I quit."

"Jesus, you must have been a kid when you signed up," Jack said. Not that she was especially surprised, but it still seemed worth comment. "Things are that bad back home?"

"Well, we lost, and everyone's dead or in hiding, so...not great," Cade said.

"Way worse than not-great," Jack remarked, with a little wince. "Sorry. Who were you fighting?"

She asked both out of sympathy and a kind of morbid curiosity; it wasn't hard for her to imagine a world in which the war against the Reapers had ended even worse than it did.

"A group called the Sith," Cade said. "They're big into galactic domination, not so much on the human rights."

Yeah, this sounded familiar.

"We got the Reapers," Jack answered. "They just wanted to wipe out all sentient organic life in the galaxy. No big deal."

"They still want some beings around--who else would they stomp beneath their karking boots?--just not the Jedi," Cade said. "Sucked to be my family."

"Reapers thought they had to wipe out organics every 50,000 years or we'd get swelled heads," Jack explained. "In between they just hang out, play cards, kill off a planet every so often for kicks. I don't know."

She waved it off. They were gone now. "Anyhow. It's brave your family kept fighting. Probably crazy, but brave."

"Brave doesn't get you very far," Cade said flatly.

"Maybe not, but it's still better than getting mowed down like a cow," Jack said, equally flatly.

"You can get mowed down like a braver animal, then," Cade said. "Doesn't make you less dead."

"Give it a hundred years or so and we're all dead," Jack pointed out. "I'd rather go down fighting. But I get why not everybody feels that way."

"Oh, I wouldn't have minded being dead," Cade said. "It's being the only survivor that karking sucks."

And this was more than he'd ever told anyone about life at home.

Yeah, Jack got that. She got it about three times over.

"You get guilty?" she asked. "Why you, why not somebody else?"

"Oh, I know why me," Cade said. "My father decided I was much too precious to stand and fight like I'd been taught and sent me away with the kids."

"Sucks that he decided that was his choice to make," Jack said, eyes flashing darkly.

"Which was why I stole a ship and went back to yell about it," Cade said. "So I have no idea where the kids ended up and got back to the surface just in time to have missed the fight."

Jack's eyebrows crept up. "So what did you do then?" she asked.

She probably would have gotten very drunk and found something to kill, but she recognized she was not a model of good coping skills.

Cade took a deep breath. "Pretended to be a grave robber when pirates arrived just after I did."

"Damn," Jack said, and then didn't say anything at all for a moment. "Sure wish there was something better to say than 'sorry that happened.'"

He shrugged. "It wasn't a highlight." He took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair. "Don't even know why I've brought it up."

"I asked," Jack said. "And sometimes stuff just has to come out. I dumped a bunch of stories on my old squad way back when. Sometimes as soon as you get somebody to listen..."

She gestured there, indicating a great flow of words.

"Just glad you felt you could tell me."

"Well, you seem to karking get it," Cade replied after an awkward pause. "I blame the memorials. We don't have one of those."

"My ship had a wall of names of dead people who'd served on it," Jack said. "This seemed to be the earth version. Just ... bigger."

She glanced over. "Still probably smaller than what you'd need."

"I wouldn't know half the names to put on it, either," Cade said quietly. "There were a bunch of us."

Jack nodded slowly. "Anything you want to do today to remember them?" she asked. "I dropped off a flower at the wall for somebody."

"I was going to get drunk?" Cade offered.

"Always the right answer," Jack said.

Once we ping in!

Jack was solemn throughout the class session, and watchful once they got to the mall. Normally she didn't care if the kids acted like kids, but this was the kind of place she needed to be solemn about.

At the memorial, she bought a rose from a vendor and put it near the panel with Sh- names. She figured somewhere, somehow, Shepard would know about it.

Cade was normally not one who cared overly much about what other people thought about his actions, but the overwhelming sense of moroseness that enveloped the entire memorial was something that even a guy-who-pretended-he-couldn't-use-the-Force couldn't ignore.

He shoved his hands into his leather jacket and tried not to make eye contact with anyone.

I couldn't have Jack *not* do a class about Veterans Day.

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Teamwork, Monday, Period 2

Sign In [11/11]

Re: Sign In [11/11]

Re: Sign In [11/11]

Re: Sign In [11/11]

Re: Sign In [11/11]

Before the Portal [11/11]

At the Memorial [11/11]

Re: At the Memorial [11/11]

Back on the Island [11/11]

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Talk to Jack + Cade [11/11]

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OOC [11/11]