Jack was drunk, slightly, ok, probably a bit more than slightly judging by the spinning in her head. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, after all, she had consumed most of a bottle of whiskey, and the broken vodka bottle in her apartment had been three-quarters empty before she’d knocked it off the table, necessitating her trip to the near her apartment. It probably wasn’t entirely sensible, but Jack was hardly known for her sense of caution, despite her success in tactical situations. Of course, when you can take a direct hit from anti-tank weaponry and live you tended to be filled with an inflated sense of indestructability, no matter how accurate that sense may actually be.

She rapped the bar with her empty glass, and the barman approached cautiously, he knew her, and what she could be like when she’d had too much. He did however, have a grudging respect for her, even if they could not be called friends. He took the bottle down from the shelf and moved along the bar to where she was resting both elbows on its stained top.

“You sure…”

The barman didn’t bother to finish the question, Jack had given him a meaningful look and he simply set the bottle down on the bar before her, then made his way down to the other regulars at the other end. The soldier simply upended what was left of the bottle into her glass, then went back to staring at the wall until the TV caught her attention.

It was on the city’s local news channel, a ‘breaking news’ story. Some place downtown had caught fire, or exploded. The news reporter didn’t seem sure, even in her drunken state though, Jack could see that it had to have been an explosion. She watched the muted TV for a while, then when nothing more interesting came on downed the rest of the whiskey and dropped a few bills onto the bar.

She hadn’t bothered with a coat, not that it was necessary in LAs stifling heat. She walked the few blocks to her apartment, and let herself in, keying in the code correctly on the second attempt. She stumbled up the stairs and into the apartment, then kicked off her shoes.

Absent mindedly crushing the smashed glass beneath her bare feet as she moved unsteadily towards the bed, and fell face forward onto it. She ignored the blinking light on her phone. Jobs could wait until the morning…