It was a pleasant little bar on an unpleasant little evening. Nice lighting and clean counters, with a television playing sports, and booths so you could sit down and order limited foodstuffs.

Her friends had said she needed to get out more. Interact with people, socialize, date. It was half past eleven on a Saturday, and this wasn’t that. Her arrival at the bar hadn’t been a social call.

Amelia hadn’t been able to sleep. There were several reasons why she hadn’t been able to sleep, but the shortest version was that her prescription for sleeping pills hadn’t yet been filled, she hadn’t stocked up on a reasonable solution that provided dreamless, sudden sleep, and she hadn’t wanted to go to the store.

‘Look at me in my green Carhart hoodie, hunched down at the bar over a drink, wearing the hoodie like armor. Ignoring the whole world.’ Amelia thought darkly.

She wasn’t okay. She had not been okay for several months. Bad dreams were a forever thing. To the whole world, she put on the brave face. Laughed. Made bad jokes. But at night, the memories of the small cell in the SUPER labs came to her, alongside every other horror story she’d experienced from working for that same monster. The doctor-prescribed sleeping pills were a necessity. And she’d been too busy to fill the prescription before she’d gone home.

She hadn’t been able to sleep, even after a long shift. She was in a bad mood. Least the whiskey was good.

‘Maybe a pretty little thing will wander by and improve the whole night’ she mused, a thought that seemed out of character for her. One more suited to one of her male coworkers. Amelia took a line from an old song to heart, and blamed it on the rain. Outside, the December rain was pouring. it could put a damper on anyone’s spirits.

Unpleasant evenings were becoming more and more common for a certain workaholic. Brook's coworkers had suggested that she get out more, loosen up, and whatnot, but she wasn't here for that reason either. Actually, drinking at a bar at eleven-thirty on a Saturday night was just a part of her weekend routine by now.

Sometimes, though, she wondered if maybe her coworkers were right and she did need to find a way to relax that didn't involve going home and getting plastered. Though she normally drank until that idea went away, just like she planned to tonight. Not far from her, she noticed a familiar figure in a green hoodie sit at the bar and order a drink as well.

She needed to 'be more social?' Fine. She grabbed her half-finished drink, then slid over to the woman who'd just sat down. "Hey. We've met before, right?" she said as she took a sip of her drink before sitting on the stool. Yeah, this was her socializing. That was as far as it got, usually. She hoped her fellow SUPERs at the office were happy.

The blonde’s appearance was sudden, though not unpleasant. Maybe Amelia had not noticed her upon walking into the bar. She’d had a lot of things on her mind. Or maybe she’d just arrived? Either way, the abrupt beginning of a conversation caused the woman to look up and regard the speaker.

The face was familiar, like someone she’d seen around the office, but it was the type of familiar that brought baggage with the memory. Not an “I know the face but not the name, is it Bob or Erica?” Sort of face. More the whole “this person has made me nervous, but I just cannot recall why. Is it looks, or something else” kind of face. It took Amelia a second to react to the comment, and put a situation and a name to a face.

This woman was the same woman who had helped her carry her off-world doppelgänger self into SUPER lockup, and deposit the vegetable in a ‘vegetable cooler’ cell for good. She was also pretty, which Amelia noted as unimportant background noise amid the sudden buzz that was that.

Had there been a conversation to go with the help? Jokes? The woman’s name was River or something. Glen? No, boys name. Brook? Something about bodies and water. Of water. Bodies of water. One drink of a drink, and it was the potential problems from remembering her own past that made her trip over herself.

Amelia opened her mouth, nodded as she solidified her memories, and replied. “I know you from work.” She said brightly. “You helped me with something heavy. Buy you a drink?”

She gestured at the bartender, and at the woman’s preexisting drink. ‘Whenever that one is finished, of course’ was the unspoken explanation.

Brook laughed dryly, followed by a coy smirk. "Oh right. You dropped off the stiff. Fun times. Sadly my work these days is more office-bound, taking care of mutant kids with criminal records as some sort of babysitter." She was remembering the woman now, but the name still escaped her. Was she even given the name? She wasn't sure.

"Andrea, right? No. No. Ami," she corrected with a shake of her head. "That's it, right?"

The blond woman gave another smirk as she was offered a drink, to which she knocked back the rest of her current one, then gave a flirty smile. "Sure~" she replied with a wink.

‘Dropped off the stiff.’ Amelia almost wanted to look around, to make sure the comment hadn’t been heard. Covert was something SUPER often focused on being, and part of her cover was that she worked for the police, rather than anyone else. Instead of looking around, she just smiled and nodded and played it off like nothing had been said at all. Nothing of note. Anyone in the bar who could of heard was probably drunk, or else would have rethought what they’d heard and amended it to “dropped off the stuff.”

The stuff in question was a body, but nobody needed to know that.

The woman tried to get her name right, and got close.

“Ami,” she agreed. “Amelia, for long.”

Ami was a nickname reserved for closer relations, like friends and lovers. At work, she tried to keep things professional but sometimes, things didn’t work out exactly as planned. Someone, somewhere, had taken up the childish nickname and it had spread.

Childish or not, she didn’t mind the woman using the nickname. Nor did Amelia mind the wink.

She nodded, and arched an eyebrow. “God knows babysitting is tiresome work. Have had to do that a few times in my day. Glad to give you a chance to let off some steam.”

The bartender fulfilled his purpose in life, and tended bar. He set the blonde up with another drink, and Amelia joined her by polishing off her own, and being resupplied.

It was good to get out and be around people. The quality of both drink, and company, was better than what she’d have found at home.

“I remember this one case...” She began. Then stopped. Went ‘hmm,’ pursing her lips. “Maybe talking shop is counter to the whole ‘steam blowing off’ thing?”