Franka could imagine about a hundred ways of life she'd prefer to being a soldier. She wondered what it must be like, and why someone would decide for it, why Hackett had wanted this. She asked casually. "Do you like that sort of life, being a soldier?" It made her wonder, speaking of choices, what she would have done if she had had an option, any option. She had still been in school when the outbreak came, had only been sixteen. Before civilised life such as she had known had turned in a long near apocalyptic nightmare, it had seemed clear what would follow, she would qualify for university, then study something. She had not even known what she wanted to study yet, there had been time, nothing to worry about. What had she worried about? She could not remember, or rather, did not trust her memories, life 'before' seemed utopian, an idyllic state unlike anything her reality had become, too good to be true. Had it really been like that, or had she subconsciously rewritten her memories over and over again, to create a vision of perfection?<br/><br/>And today, what if she were given a choice now, what would she want to do with herself, her life, if she could jump straight into what once had been a 'normal life' for her, and still counted as one in all those countries outside Europe? She drew a blank, had no idea. Stare, she supposed, wander, a wide eyed freak, through shopping malls full of goods she barely recognised anymore, and along streets, gaping at all the cars, bikes, people, all those uninfected, well fed people - overfed, if that was still the rule out there, who went to school, university, work, had children, living families, even pets, and flats, cars, bank accounts, cinemas, phones, computers and so on, and whose thought about - well, what, really, what did people her age think about in that other world? What would they think about someone like her? And what had happened out there in the last six years, how much had changed, how much gone on just as she remembered? Weird, all that, so weird. She could ask Hackett, of course, but for some odd reason, she was too shy, or, she interrupted herself wryly, too afraid to hear just how desirable all that was which she couldn't have.<br/><br/>She dismissed all that, pushed it back, down, aside, and laughed with Hackett, back in the moment, in the half abandoned conversation. Hackett's mock threat made her grin, and she amused herself with an image of Hackett darting out of the shower to pick up her rifle and point it at Derrick. She turned to the divide with Hackett on the other side of it, grinned at the outline of the woman she could just barely make out. "Right, at least he'll die happy, seeing you stark naked, skin aglow and wet from the shower as you handle a mighty gun should come damn near to guy-fantasy Heaven." She laughed, wondering where that had come from, a way of thinking from six years ago that had suddenly connected with the here and now. "I mean, if I remember that part right, an angry, sexy martial arts lady with a gun used to be the next best thing a guy could whack off to, right after hot lesbian sex."