Steam from hot mulled wine was filling the room with a pleasant scent. Still Claudia frowned over the rim of her cup at Kate. The younger woman was sprawled haphazardly in a chair across the room. Kate's once immaculate scout armor was in a shambles, stains spotting it, as well as being in obvious disre-pair.
Claudia dropped her gaze to the mug of wine in her hands, she hated to nit-pick, especially at the woman who had been so kind as to permit her to stay in her house but... still.
"You were at The Den again this even' weren't you Calico?" There was no response, the guards woman barely even grunted. Claudia's frown deepened.
At first there had been a sort of easy friendship between the crafter woman and the scout. But as time wore on, and the events of that time wore on the Lady now known as Calico Kate she had begun to slowly fall apart. Kate was an opium addict, she swore violently, and she drank as much as she smoked. It wasn't even really sure whether or not she still had her commission as a regular guardsman she had been absent for so long from command. Claudia wasn't exactly sure what it was that had begun the downward spiral... for a time Calico had been the life of the party, flitting from one man to the next as if she didn't have a care in the world. But Calico always kept coming back to one: Ryan Greystone. And now he was gone... perhaps that was it. Claudia was fairly positive that even in her frequent drinking binges and all to often lay-ins at the Nujlem opium den Calico had yet to pick another male to fool around with.
It was if the spark had gone out of Kate. Some men, and women are meant to rule, to command and to lead. And Claudi had always assumed that Calico was one of those people. I was the way she wore her armor, the strength of the bonds between herself and her fellow guardsmen. It was her easy laughter, quick cheek and natural tendency to take command of a situation.
Claudia pondered which would be the kinder move; to let the flame haired younger woman drink her self to death, when death was what she so clearly craved, or to step in and try to bring her some sort of hope or purpose. Taking another small sip of the cooling wine Claudi stared across the room at Calico, her brow furrowed in though.
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It really was all gone... all lost. She couldn't go back home, she couldn't stand to return to piracy. She'd lost her feel for the uniform she'd once been so proud to wear months past. She'd lost every man she'd ever toyed with. Either by hurting him, or by shunning him and in the end...it was she that was alone. Kate had fallen into an even deeper depression as the baron left Cove, taking so many of her friends with him to Yew. On one hand she really didn't care one way or the other witch city she served in. It was about her comrades, not the politics. But when they were divided, some in Yew, some in Cove, Kate's only lingering loyalty was to the scout master Valiro. So in Cove she stayed. But her service was spotty at best.
Ryan was gone.
She didn't like to think that the absence of one man could put such a hole in her life. Did not want to think about all of the "what if's" that there were concerning his abrupt disappearance. Thoughts were so much safer to be had when it was through a haze of opium, and then washed clean once more with cheep ale the next morning.
Kate needs some thing to live for. When she was younger she lived to serve her family and her Loyalites to the Lord British. When her brother was murdered she lived soly to avenge his death. On coming to Cove she learned to live for the men fighting next to her, and for the fun to be had at the end of a long days battle.
She kept wondering why she was doing this the slow way... poisoning her mind with the smoke, and damaging her body with liquor and not enough food. Why not just finish it quick?
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