Fractured Fairy Tales

Mesa nudged the door open gently to find Opal sitting in the window sill of the room they'd been sharing. She had a blanket over her knees and stared wearily out the window; a half-empty bottle of whiskey dangled loosely by its neck from her fingertips. Mesa sighed.

Opal lifted the bottle to her lips and cocked her head back. The size of the gulp she took made it even clearer that it wasn't her first of the night. Mesa sat on the bed, a few feet away from Opal, and tossed his haori next to him. He decided to break the silence as he was rolling a cigarette.

"You've been in especially poor spirits lately."

Opal, smacking her lips after a particularly long pull, squinted hazily at the label on the whiskey bottle.

"Tell me about it. You ran out of good shit the first night we got here. And that's not all my fault. You guys haven't exactly been tee totaling it."

Mesa lit the cigarette without reacting to Opal's sarcastic reply.

"You've barely left the room since we got here. The others are starting to wonder what the hell's wrong with you. And so am I."

Mesa exhaled a ring of smoke and held his hand out to Opal, who passed the bottle to him. He took a drink and then set the bottle roughly on the nightstand. He laid back on the bed and took another drag of his cigarette while he waited for a reply, unsure if he'd actually get one. Opal decided to oblige his prying, however.

"I guess... I didn't realize how out of control I could get," she said, cautiously.

Mesa smirked and replied, "Ha, you mean with the booze?"

"No, fuck off. I mean with Naru... I just... lost it. I directly betrayed the Order, I attacked our allies, I didn't think any of that through. I just flew straight off the fucking handle. Gods, I'm worse than Anton."

Mesa sat up, blowing another cloud of smoke, albeit a shapeless one this time.

He asked her, "Does that bother you?"

Opal extended her arm and held out two fingers. Unsure if she was asking for more whiskey or a drag, Mesa handed her the cigarette in hopes of keeping her coherent long enough to talk to her. She took a drag and paused for a moment, holding the smoke in her mouth. Pursing her lips into a tight circle, she worked them back and forth rapidly, producing a spider-shaped plume of smoke. She smirked and remarked, "Nice, right? I think you're rubbing off on me."

Even Mesa, who had intended to have a serious conversation, couldn't help but be amused. He grinned and admitted, "Actually, that is pretty cool. You know, I remember a long time ago, five or six years, you were scolding me for sleeping around when I should have been working. I was remarking on what a time sink it was making up stories to get away from one night stands in the morning. You said one of the down sides of sleeping with someone regularly is that you might actually have to talk to them."

Opal sighed, and Mesa continued, "Well, time to put your money where your mouth is."

Opal replied timidly, "Can I at least have the whiskey back?"

Mesa shrugged - he could only be so serious. He picked up the bottle from the night stand, took a long drink, and handed it back to Opal. He repeated his question.

"So you were a bit... brash with the whole Naru situation. And that's not really first the time. But is that what's bothering you?"

Opal shrugged, taking another drink to buy more time with her response. She finally replied.

"I don't know. Feeling that way, thrashing back relentlessly to get to Naru, forgetting about what damage I was doing to the Order... it got me thinking about how we got to this point. Deep shit like that... The kind none of us like admitting we think about."

Mesa retorted quickly, "But we all do. What do you mean 'this point'?"

"I dunno... This just wasn't how I imagined it. Life, work, whatever."

Mesa sighed, realizing this risked becoming a deeper conversation than he was hoping for. He took the bottle back from her and took a long pull himself before replying with another question.

"What did you imagine?"

Opal shook her head, gesturing for the bottle back. While she waited for Mesa to hand it over, she said, "I don't know. Gods, damn. I don't know. That's why I didn't want to have this conversation. I'm not ready to have it. I don't know... I guess I miss when things were less personal. Further from home. I liked when we could still pretend like this was just a job."

She chuckled a bit, although the end of the chuckle trailed off into a hiccup, then continued.

"Ugh. A convenient illusion, I know. What a hypocrite I must be, upset that something bad finally happened to someone I care about..."

Opal, clearly quite drunk at this point, slumped further back into the window sill and elaborated. Before talking, she rubbed her face with her hands and groaned.

"I hate feeling this way too. This is almost as bad as being uncontrollably pissed off."

Mesa questioned, "Feeling what way?"

Opal contemplated her reply for a moment, feeling her own limited eloquence fading by the minute. "I dunno... all existential... Doesn't this type of shit ever bother you?"

Mesa thought for a moment and finished his cigarette in silence. He turned to Opal, leaning back on his elbows.

"Actually, it doesn't."

((To be continued.))