Inga | Third Year | 15:53 | M: Crew, Jensen, Will

After a long and uncomfortable morning, Inga found a seat on the bus toward the back. She preferred to be away from the action, and she didn’t particularly want to engage with any of the individuals on the team when all they continued to want to do was tear her apart. Her skin was thick enough to take all of the loathing that was distributed in her direction, but that didn’t mean that she was dumb enough to go looking for it, either. There was no one on the team that had her back, nor would they if her co-captain had anything to do with it. Yet, somewhere deep inside of her, she knew that she would have to do the thing she hated most if she was going to get anywhere on this team: play nice, and suck up to the right people.

Up until this point, Inga hadn’t necessarily considered this behavior. Sucking up to anyone was a sign of weakness, let alone individuals who clearly did not respect or welcome her. Yet, she’d spent the first part of the morning back in the headmaster’s office, complaining about the events that had occurred the night prior. A part of her felt guilt for allowing herself to be so cruel to Crew, which had been extremely evident all over his features after she’d offered the cutting remarks. Yet, it seemed apparent to her that the most comfortable logic to fit her situation was that he’d struck first by ruining her party, which hurt her socially as much as she’d hurt him emotionally. After offering the formal complaint, the headmaster reminded her that decisions were final on the teams, and that failure to get along with her co-captain would likely result from a premature ejection from the team, and one that would not be remedied until the start of the spring semester. This set her straight in a way that nothing had prior, and she spent the morning packing for the trip with Crew in silence, unwilling to be the one to fix things between them, but unwilling to rub salt in the wound, either.

Since the American didn’t know about her second complaint to the headmaster, she thought it better to keep things that way. She realized now that she needed to manage to get him to become fond of her in a way that kept her as an option to return to the team in the spring, but not fond enough of her that the headmaster would allow their situation to be resolved in the first quarter of the semester. At this moment, she wasn’t entirely sure how to do anything except for get him to hate her more, which she seemed to be quite good at. She was great at hating him, too, in fairness. Neither of those qualities affected her situation in a positive light, so she knew that something would have to change soon.

Not long after she took a seat at the back of the bus, the blond entered, sitting toward the front. There was a distant look etched across his features as there had been for most of the time she’d been with him, and for a moment she wondered what could cause a person to feel so miserable. Of course, if she lived the life he did, made the choices he made, and surrounded himself with the people he did, she would feel miserable too, but she wondered why he felt like he didn’t have the power to create change and happiness in his own life. She barely allowed her train of thought to cease as a familiar, curly-haired blond took a seat beside her, chattering away as her focus remained glued on the American at the front of the bus. She studied him with a neutral expression as he took not one, not two, but three pills and seemed to slowly fade off into a stupor. The action put a bad taste in her mouth, but what concerned her more was that, like always, she was the only one who seemed to be concerned by his behavior.

As the bus took off for the competition site, Inga lowered herself into a forced conversation with Will, feeling fortunate that he seemed to want to do most of the talking. He was quite popular around the school for many of the same reasons as Crew, and she briefly stopped to wonder what kind of interest someone like him would have in someone like her, especially given how easily everyone had fallen into hating her. Despite this, she took the opportunity to build rapport with a key figure of the team, only pausing every now and again to study the back of the sleeping frame in the front, who appeared to be the polar opposite of all of the joy and amusement that were happening around him. While Will was a great first step toward achieving her goals, she knew that breaking down the layers and layers of walls that Crew had put up would be a much more difficult and time-consuming task.

Inga | Third Year | 20:55 | M: Crew, Jensen, Will

Nothing in Inga wanted to go to the alleged party that Will had suggested would be taking place somewhere in the vicinity of her co-captain, yet, she had fully surrendered to the notion that success in this trip, in this team, and in this life was going to take a bit of sacrifice from her. Despite her deep and ardent desire to go to bed immediately considering that she and Crew would have a long morning and afternoon of meetings, course walk, and training ahead of them, she’d taken Will up on his offer of joining their little get-together, something she vowed long ago she would never do willingly. Yet, things felt different now, and there was a lot more at stake than there had been when she’d made that promise to herself.

A little after eight, the young Swede arrived at the location Will had suggested, and her eyes immediately wandered to a familiar figure who was lurking in the corner, rust-colored hair falling in his face as he attempted to get away from the crowd unscathed. Jensen seemed to be smuggling alcohol from the party for a secondary location, which something in her secretly hoped was somewhere alone as opposed to in the company of others–especially women. Despite this, she’d decided long ago that getting involved romantically with someone with the Eliopoulos last name would be a bad career decision, and she held too much self-discipline to allow herself to fall in love for the wrong person. Love was a choice, after all, not something that could hold her captive without her consent. Not long after she found him in the crowd, she watched him pass her in the hallway, headed to wherever he was going alone.

As she attempted to make her way over to Will to thank him for extending the invite, she felt the blunt force of another, larger body crashing into hers, steadied only by the grip of a strong hand on her waist. Confusion struck her first, for she couldn’t think of a single person in this room–other than Will, who was across the room–who wouldn’t want to see her fall. Even more shockingly, she followed the familiar appearance of the hand up to an even more familiar face, who appeared to be studying her with what at least appeared to be concern. As she stepped out of his embrace at the same time that he was releasing it on his own, she was surprised that he was the first to speak. He’d been avoiding her and anything to do with her all day.

“Inga,” came his response, “sorry, that’s all on me.” She bit her tongue and avoided expressing annoyance at the falsely sweet tone he mustered. Their relationship hadn’t been fixed, he was simply putting on a good show for everyone.

“Not a problem,” she responded in a short tone, allowing her gaze to wander beyond him. She had no interest in faking niceties with him for the sake of his precious social image. Yet, she had to do what she had to do, even if she felt that coming here was a mistake. “I’ll see you in the morning at seven for breakfast, we can go over our plans for the weekend then and walk over to the meeting together from there.”

Without waiting for his agreement or disagreement, Inga weaved through more partygoers in order to get to Will, spending a few moments with him before a few possessive women decided that the blonde had gotten too close, and they attempted to intimidate her out of a conversation she didn’t really want to be in anyway. Every now and again, her gaze wandered to the blond figure across the room, who was equally deep in alcohol and women. Feeling uncomfortable and unsure of why she’d convinced herself to come, the young woman waited until enough time had passed that it appeared she was enjoying herself to leave the scene, exiting the loud environment and breathing out a sigh of relief as silence took the place of the loud music and superficial conversations she’d just been immersed in.

Not long after, Inga found her hotel room, which she wasn’t surprised to realize was directly next to Crew’s considering that they were both captains, and both had a room to themselves for the weekend. After briefly completing her evening routine, the young woman went to bed easily, having stayed up well past her typical bedtime in order to appease Crew’s friends and gain a stronger public image of her own. While she wasn’t entirely confident in his ability to show up to breakfast on time, hungover and likely full of pills, she was confident that she would do her job well, regardless of whether she had his support or not.

Inga | Third Year | 06:20 | M: Crew

Although Inga had left for her room markedly earlier than the majority of the team, her features told the story of just how poorly her sleeping attempts had gone. Although she wasn’t necessarily an anxious person, the young woman had never slept well in new environments, and this was no exception. And, because she refused to do anything about it other than lie there, Inga had spent some of the night downstairs in the hotel gym, and the other half passively lying in wait for the dark bags to show up under her eyes. Because of her pale complexion, these were even more noticeable, and her skin had taken on a sickly appearance that was almost ghastly in hue. If she had any desire to feel self-conscious about this, however, it only disappeared with the entrance of her co-captain, who appeared even worse off than her.

“Good morning,” she greeted in a soft tone, only briefly looking up from the planner she had on the table. She’d spoken with the coach before the young man’s arrival in order to get all of the details in order despite the fact that Crew had made it perfectly clear how he felt about her taking on any kind of responsibility over the weekend. Even if she was only there to keep up appearances, it still helped her to have all of the information about who was supposed to be where and when, including herself. Although she might have preferred to sit out the first competition of the season, it was absolutely necessary for captains to compete at every competition, and this was no exception. With that said, Inga was not complaining about Crew’s control issues. In fact, she thought he was foolish for trying to be a rider and a captain without asking anyone for help, something she’d noticed as a blatant weakness of his. Vaguely, as she consumed a bit more of her strong black coffee, she wondered what might’ve caused him to behave in such a way.

The rest of the morning went off without a hitch, the breakfast in silence and the following meeting between the pair and their coach in a muted sense of interaction. Without delay, the blondes continued on in their schedule by heading to the first of several official meetings that required their attendance while the remainder of the riders went with the coach to walk the course and hack their horses. To Inga’s surprise, the meeting was quite large, and organized by surname rather than team. With that said, she was placed in an entirely different area of the auditorium than her co-captain, which was both a pleasant surprise and a concern. However, she was vaguely able to keep an eye on him until about halfway through the meeting, when she turned her head to locate him in the crowd and failed to.

Within seconds of this, a low tone sounded right in her ear, and she jumped with enough force that she dropped her clipboard, causing the people beside her to look over. Crew was behind her, saying something about the fact that he was leaving and that she would be in charge of the team for the rest of the day. This was an odd statement to her, paired with the intensity of his decision to whisper this in her ear rather than simply sending a text. She heard the urgency in his voice and wondered if some sort of emergency had occurred, although she didn’t voice anything other than her typical cool, calm, and collected response of agreement.

As the day continued on, Inga finished with the meetings and finally got around to hacking Odin late in the afternoon during the dinner hour, which she had elected to skip in the name of horsemanship. When she checked in with their coach to ask him to have her dinner sent up to her room for her, she asked about Crew, and was even more surprised to hear that he was perfectly fine and that the coach had seen him recently. Now she felt even more anger and resentment toward a man that she had once felt the slightest amount of pity for, assuming that this was just another way he was testing her. This thought stuck with her for most of her ride and distracted her for even longer after. As she finally arrived back to the hotel, the thought occurred to her that his room was next to hers, and as she showered and prepared for the next day with the same feeling of frustration still prevalent, she decided she was going to give him a piece of her mind. Stepping out of her dorm to face him angrily for a second time in her pajamas, Inga knocked several times on his door, concerned about whether or not he was alone and who she might find on the other side.