Chapter Text
Soul was convinced the bad taste of utter failure would never leave her mouth.
Her father had left her the place in Portia, fully furnished even, all she had to do was get it registered and start working.
What she didn’t plan on was the frequency in which the equipment failed, her machines constantly breaking down, the house needing extensive repairs, it was problem after problem.
It was like 1 step forward, then she was shoved 20 steps back; any money she managed to make was quickly spent to fix something else.
To make ends meet, she struck up a deal with one of the owners of the construction shop in town, she would f*ck him, and he would give her cash or materials, whatever she needed.
This is also how she developed her love of drugs; he always kept a plethora of them, they would choose whatever caught their fancy for the evening, use all he had, and screw until they passed out.
Towards the end of her being in Portia she relied completely on him to survive. She had given up months ago on her dreams, her shop sat forgotten while she slipped into a world of self-destruction fueled by substance abuse, depression, and sex.
What had driven her to the absolute end was the night she caught him f*cking another woman.
She freaked out and began grabbing whatever items were in her reach and launching them at him. Screaming and crying, she proceeded to trash his whole house.
The civil corps had to come and remove her. Within two weeks of that she had answered a help-wanted ad from Sandrock, got the gig as their new builder, sold everything she owned and left.
All that had occurred over two years ago.
Since then, she had settled in Sandrock, got clean, rose to top builder, made friends, and even managed to save the entire town on more than one occasion. She had flourished, she was happy.
She was considered a hero after battling it out with the Duvos Empire, alongside her friends, Justice, Unsuur, Grace, and Logan.
Together they’d driven the Empire out and stopped them from obtaining a powerful old-world relic they wanted to use for nefarious purposes.
Now, months later as life was returning to normal, she began struggling.
She had suffered some serious injuries during those battles.
A jagged scar that began at her eyebrow and ended mid-cheek was evidence of a hellish knife fight she’d almost lost.
Her femur had also been broken as they fought off the former minister, who was driving an 8 ft robot suit, trying to kill them with it.
While the physical wounds were healing, the mental ones were still oozing and raw.
She had begun to backslide on her sobriety due to the pain pills she needed for her broken leg bone while it was healing.
She had nightmares from the battles she’d gone through, causing her to develop insomnia, she started drinking herself to sleep, hoping it would stop them. But all it did was cause her a few hours of fitful slumber before the pain in her leg awoke her.
During the day she turned to using stimulant pills to help her get through work, she was often so tired she couldn’t function. A few times she caught herself about to make a costly mistake on a commission she was doing. She felt herself sliding down a familiar road and it was taking its toll on her.
One night she sat on her porch, unable to sleep like usual. Her leg had been hurting more than normal while she worked that day, so she washed down a few pain pills with one of the many whiskey-based drinks she’d had.
She had been sitting on her front porch most of the evening drinking and dwelling, she felt certain she was about to fail in Sandrock, a repeat of Portia.
The difference between the two was that here she had achieved something, she had friends, her business was successful, she had a life. It was so much more to lose; she couldn’t bear the thought of it.
Why couldn’t she be stronger when life got rough? Why was she driven to such self-destruction when she felt like things were out of control?
She winced as pain bolted down her leg, she grabbed the pills from her pocket and took a couple more.
Looking at the bottle, she had a thought.
“What’s stopping me from just downing the rest?”
It would certainly put a stop to her inevitable failure.
Popping the lid back off she said, “bottoms up” before spilling what was left of the pills onto her tongue, then taking a mighty swig off the whiskey bottle to wash them down.
It didn’t take long for a warm, peaceful feeling to spread throughout her body, making her feel extremely sleepy.
She attempted to stand up, wanting to go inside, but felt horribly disoriented.
The earth tilted around her, she stumbled off the porch and fell to the ground, landing hard on her side.
She rolled over onto her back, the world was spinning, it made her feel sick, and she vomited, choking on it, too f*cked up to roll back to her side and let it come out of her mouth.
She couldn’t breathe, drowning in her own sick, her vision began to fade, body feeling to heavy to panic.
As she closed her eyes, she thought she heard someone shout before losing consciousness.
