Rose Brass

by Dave Bryant

Pay It Forward

Busy fingers clattered on a rugged mechanical keyboard, then paused as Rose read back the new paragraphs with a slight grimace. She reached over to the mouse to bump up the cursor for a few changes and corrections.

At first she had tried a chording keyboard, thinking to minimize the residual awkwardness of her artificial hand, before discovering it was a steeper learning curve than simply practicing with her bum wing on a standard lay-out. She couldn’t achieve the same words per minute she’d managed before her life changed, but she’d reached an acceptable speed for filling out forms and reports.

She reviewed the alterations and nodded to herself in satisfaction. Another moment with the mouse banished the electronic document to the central repository, after which she pushed back her chair and stood to stretch. Both arms rose ceilingward and her back arched, unhampered by a fine powder-blue business jacket, trim matching slacks, and simple white blouse—though shiny black closed-lace shoes made standing on tiptoe a bit harder.

The dozen or so suits in various pastel colors she’d purchased from Carousel Boutique had cost a fortune, but she didn’t begrudge a penny. Thanks to the meticulous tailoring, not only did they look sharp and professional, they flattered her tall, lean figure and didn’t restrict her movements. She came down from the stretch and turned to nudge the swivel chair again, toward the leg well of the sturdy laminate and steel desk.

The office in which she stood was tiny, a mix of old and new, but it was all hers. The hulking brutalist building around it had to date back at least half a century, and her desk might be even older. On the other hand, the rest of the furniture and the computer hardware, including a flat-panel monitor, had been drawn from the latest institutional order. A trio of newish metal and plastic stacking chairs faced the front of the desk in a slight arc. The computer table from which she had risen stood at right angles to the desk, backing up against one of the room’s two huge windows; the arrangement wasn’t ideal, but after all the architecture pre-dated the advent of desktop computers, so like many other occupants Rose simply left the blinds closed on that window to minimize glare. The corner of the L-shape formed by the two work surfaces was filled in by a low metal supply cabinet, crowned with a store-bought succulent in a clay pot. And she still could smell a whiff of fresh paint and cleaning solutions.

The room boasted only one other prominent item. On the wall behind the desk, at eye level for someone a little shorter than she, hung a sizable picture frame, its double mat cut with a pair of openings. One displayed a diploma, the other a certificate of qualification.

Nothing else competed for the eye—not even the “I love me” wall of memorabilia accumulated by any military officer. Rose simply couldn’t bring herself to unpack the sealed box on the closet floor in her flat. Even her class ring had returned to its velveted box. That chapter of her life had closed, and she was embarking on a new one.

She lowered herself back onto the chair and reached her prosthetic hand for the mug of coffee placed neatly on a saucer. Before she could bring it to her lips, a babel of voices rose somewhere in the hallway outside, riding over the usual low murmur of activity that wafted through the open doorway at the far corner of the wall opposite the windows. Curious, she put the mug back down and glanced up just as a pair of individuals popped through the door, followed by a uniformed policeman who looked to be about her age.

She leaned back to frown at the apparent chaperone, her narrowed eye reading off his nameplate. “What’s this about, Officer . . . Blue?”

The cop waved his hand at the duo standing between him and the stacking chairs. “The folks downstairs thought you’d be the best person to talk some sense into these kids.” He shrugged. “I figured bringing ’em here was better than running ’em in.”

Her brow rose. “Really.” She looked more closely at the boys—young men—in their late teens. Both looked the worse for wear in disheveled but otherwise nondescript clothing. They stared at her scars and eyepatch with trepidation.

One was medium height, if a little stooped, and skinny as a rail. His short soot-black hair streaked with purple stuck out untidily and, she suspected, uncharacteristically. Watery gray eyes were wary behind black-framed spectacles of a style her troops used to call “BC glasses”. His dark-red complexion didn’t show the agitated flush she’d bet was heating his face. One of his hands was clamped on his companion’s upper arm.

Said companion wasn’t much taller or heavier, but he did stand straighter. His equally messy hair was a drab reddish brown, his visible eye a slightly lighter brown. The other sported a magnificent shiner, but she assumed it normally matched. His free hand clutched the remains of another pair of glasses, likely broken by the same blow. The expression on his mist-gray face was defiant; for some reason she was put in mind of a cornered tiger roused to anger from a languid repose.

Rose rocked back and forth on her chair for a long moment, studying the pair, who returned the scrutiny with tight expressions. Then she sat up and swept her prosthetic arm in a crisp arc to point at the chairs. “Sit down, both of you. Officer Blue, thank you; I’ll take it from here.” As the uniform stepped out, closing the door behind him, she turned back. “My name is Rose Brass. Captain Rose Brass. But you can call me Ms. Brass.” She paused a moment as they perched on the edges of their seats, then added briskly, “All right, let’s get started. Who might you two be, and why did Officer Blue think he should bring you to Social Services instead of the city lock-up?”

Author's Note:

The only bit of jargon that might need an explanation is the military slang term “BC glasses”, short for “birth control glasses”—so called because nobody wearing them is likely to reach first base, let alone any farther. The various designs over the years have been cheap and durable, perfectly suited for issue to young troops dealing with field conditions, but most of them are ugly as sin.

Many thanks to Scampy for pre-reading and to I-A-M for letting me borrow their characters Sticky Note and Bright Eyes!

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Glad I finally got back to this one. Outstanding character study as we see Rose rebuild herself to become the pillar so many others needed. Thank you for it.

[Dave Bryant]

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And thank you for the kind comments!

It really did bring a sense of closure to write this. And it makes Rose’s story the longest, in terms of both word count and elapsed in-universe time. Between the beginning of Rose Brass and the opening of The Campus is just about thirty years!

[TamiyaGuy]

When you said that Rose Brass was a prequel to Amphorae, I thought it’d be by a few months, maybe a year. But wow, this really does feel a lifetime apart, and in a way I guess it is. But it’s still our much-beloved Captain Brass. In that very ‘Dave’ kind of way, it’s clear you’ve used the time difference to great effect here, and I adore how you’ve weaved in your own interpretation of the less fleshed-out bits of the canon via the Apple and Light(?) families.

Bloody hell, for a side story you really do throw us in at the deep end. A flashback it may have been, but the exacting detail of the introductory scene put me right there, and the snap back to the present day… well, in that brief intro, you perfectly encapsulate bot why Rose regarded Lectern’s ‘request’ with more than a little scepticism, and why Lectern made it in the first place.

“No.” The flat tone betrayed a glimmer of self-righteous disapproval. “I don’t.”

“I do.”

I don’t know why, but for as brief as this exchange is, I absolutely adore it – I can perfectly picture the no-bullshit nurse saying that in immovable deadpan, and the even-less­-bullshit Rose giving as good as she’s getting. But there’s an underlying solemnity behind it as well – it doesn’t take much to understand why Redheart’s not a fan of firearms just from those three words. And in a way, it’s nice to see Rose’s nearly dumbfounded response when Redheart expands upon that afterwards. Rose’s narrative voice mentioned Redheart speaking with “self-righteous disapproval” but I couldn’t help but notice how Rose’s inner monologue carried a certain air of, well, self-righteous approval. Rose feels a bit more fiery in Rose Brass, a bit more raw. Not just in terms of her attitude, but also her proximity to the Army (both people and, well, events).

mid-fifties or around twelve degrees

YOU ARE MY FAVOURITE PERSON FOR GIVING THE TEMPERATURE IN BOTH AMERICAS AND EUROPES (and including that very militaristic insistence on unambiguity – nice!)

All in all, between this and Three Act Play, it really feels like you’ve fleshed Rose out into her own character; she’s no longer just the means to another character’s end, and she seems to fit right into that perfect fanfiction niche of being a deeper and more serious look at a character, while still remaining ‘universe-respectful’. Lovely stuff.

[Dave Bryant]

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After Three-act Play I realized I definitely needed to visit the events that made Rose who and what she is in the rest of the series—and I had more material with which to do so. At least one review of Amphorae dinged it for being “bare bones”, though Scampy rebutted that by pointing out the story was just what it needed to be and no more. This is what she would call the “explosition” story!

To be honest, the presence of Twi’s and AJ’s parents grew out of the site rule a story must be relevant! It took a lot of thought to work in canon characters, most of whom are small children at the time, and avoid getting the story banned. I did my best to make a virtue of that necessity and overall I’m pleased with the results.

Rose starts the story as a real mess, and it behooved me to treat her with the same respect I did the Dazzlings and Wallflower. And yeah, at this earlier, younger stage of her life she’s more of a firebrand than she is as a woman well into middle age. As for her self-righteous approval, I simply drew on my own love of shooting to inform her inner monologue—that’s exactly how I feel about it. Moreover, it was an early lesson on the fact other people don’t see the world the same way she does, and they may even have a point.

The US military uses SI units vastly more than the general public does, which is part of why the whole bit about temperatures was included. The other part was just to illustrate a quirk of the spirit thermometer itself, a touch of whimsy and descriptive color—and yes, to accommodate folks who don’t use Freedom Units. Fun fact: I have that exact thermometer, which dates back to the . . . 1980s, I think? It hangs from the military-surplus harness that carries my hiking gear. It used to have a teeny-tiny compass glued into a recess at its foot, but the glue gave out decades ago and the compass has long since disappeared.

Rose has always been a fully rounded person in my head, but it did take Three-act Play to draw out a lot more than was needed for Amphorae. Once I had that material, it would have been criminal not to develop it further!