Ashe "Winter" Ruby's Questionnaire

Right now, I live in a trailer park outside of Flagstaff, Arizona.  I like it because it's min the middle of nowhere.  It's miles away from any lawman who might care to have a look, and the rent on the place is cheap.  The neighbors are too busy being strung out in their own right to bother with the weirdo with the dusty old ride outside, and a trailer in the desert is a perfect place to rest up from a bullet wound.  In short, I like it because it's quiet, cheap, and no one asks questions about what each other are doing.  On an unrelated point, if anyone tries to come at me sideways here in the desert, well, lots of open sand pretty close...it's damned easy digging if I need any particularly big holes sto hide something.

Currently, I work for companies who need things.  Let's say, for example, a big pharma kind of company needs something like a piece of evidence to go missing.  Let's say that, hypothetically, they need plausible deniability.  In that kind of situation, they're likely to reach out to someone who knows someone who knows me, and for a reasonable fee, it get's done.  Anyone asks, I got no ties to the big company, no reason to be there, and they could say they don't even know some biker chick who looks like a strung out junkie.

Most of the money I make goes to rent, food, and keeping my bike running.  If I don't have anything to do for a while, and it doesn't look like I have a job sliding my way, money that doesn't go to doctor bills likely goes to 'self-medicating'.

So, in my line of work, it helps to work in teams.  Summer, she was my partner.  Friendly, kind...good at talking to people, she was.  Job went pear-shaped, and she didn't walk away.  Turned out it was a rival company from the one that hired me, and they were out to make some nameless, faceless prick look stupid.  The job didn't get done, and the best partner I ever had got a one way trip to the afterlife.  I don't nearly have the means to bring the whole company to it's knees...but I will.  When I do, they're going to pray to whoever will listen that all I do is bury them in a shallow grave.

Would I kill?  Yes.  Would I die?  Yes.  Would I torture a shitload of hapless yes-men on the way to the sons of bitches to make sure I cut the last head from the hydra?  Damned right.  Without a second thought or a moment's heistation.

The death of my partner hit me like a ton of bricks, but the absolute bending I went on after was just as bad.  Heroine, cocaine, ketamine...the list goes on.  I tried really hard to bury myself in it back when I blamed myself for letting Summer die, and a few people are likely to tell you that it's the reason I'm not the most sociable.  I might have eased up on the narcotics a little bit, but grappling with the addiction taught me a few things.  I am a whole lot tougher than I thought I was, and in the end, someone out there things that I am still worth something, even if I personally tend to define myself by the worst moment of my life.

First of all is the little guy I am closest to, and that's Fireball Ned.  He'd a little Frenchie I got to keep me company.  He's ugly in a cute way, and he's got a ton of energy.  Most days he'll just run around the outside of the trailer until he falls asleep.  He's affectionate, too, even when I don't deserve it.  I don't know if I would technically call him an emotional support animal or a service animal or whatever, but he's gotten me out of a few dark places now and then.  I know there's know way I'd still be hanging onto this whole goddamned world without him.

Dad would likely be the next one.  Paul Ruby.  He's a Boomer that never stops talking about how tough World War Two was for folks like us...but he'd never seen the ugliness of it.  He's never looked down the barrel of a gun, or had to try to evade the authorities because it would cost most of your life if they DID catch you.  He did his best to raise me right, though...I mean, that's what kids say about their parents, innit?

Then there's Amy.  Amy Delgado is my dealer.  I mean, I might say she's a good person too.  Dunno how close I would say she is, given that she was keeping me in the junkie at my lowest.  I guess, when you think about it, she never sold me a hot dose, and I rarely ended up in a situation where I was too strung out to function.  She cut me off before I OD'ed, and she still kind of keeps up on how I'm coping with death and the job and things like that.

Depends on what it is you mean by love.  Romantic love?  No.  Mum and Dad said I was 'cold'.  Term the docs use now is 'asexual', though I do like looking at the female form a bit more than male.  What if I were to tell you that the only person I ever really had any kind of deep love for was someone I didn't even know the name of?  Just like me, she went by her callsign.  She was warm, kind, friendly...everything I wasn't.  Beautiful, too.  Good skin.  Anyway, she worked with me for a few years in the private sector doing 'aquisitions'.  If she could talk her way in, I covered her back.  If she couldn't talk her way in, she could run cover while I snuck my way in.  We spent years on the road together, and you can't help but fall for someone like that in some kind of way.  Well, that or you try to kill each other, I guess.  Suffice as to say, I loved her something awful, and losing her almost killed me.  Still might.

Worst fears?  Now there's a question with an easier answer.  See, people like me live with a purpose.  People like me got a job to do.  I do the job, get my pay, and try really, really hard to kill the memories of the times I couldn't get the job done.  That, or I come home to the slobbery face of the best damned dog on the planet.  That being said, the thing that wakes me in a cold sweat almost every goddamned night is the fear that I can't get the job done.  I didn't get it done when Summer died.  Lost everything that day, and now I just...what if I never get the kind of justice she deserves?  What if there isn't a light at the end of the tunnel?  Redemption is a long hard road, with no promise of a statisfying end.  The only thing I know for sure is that I need that revenge like I need air or water.  The biggest fear?  It's not being strong enough to get it, or dying before I get the chance to deliver it to the people who have it coming.  Then what?  It's my first thought every morning, and my last thought in the dead of night when I'm finally numb enough or exhausted enough to try to sleep through the nightmares.