On Any Other Day

[earthborn]

Who| Shepard And Her Adoring Fans
What| The Customer Complaints Desk Is [OPEN]
Where| A lovely little park outside a lovely little café on a quiet day when the sun is shining, just after a certain network post
When| The morning after Shepard's Exposé goes live.
Warnings/Notes| Talk of murder, genocide, cussing, and political discourse. God help us all.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, she's got a rail-thin barrista with a shock of violet-pink hair, and he keeps bringing her coffee from all the way across the street. On any other day, she'd call it perfect— he keeps sarcastically saluting her and she keeps sarcastically thanking him as 'private', and the coffee is damn good in addition to cheap and hand-delivered. On any other day.

But despite the shining weather and the convenient caffeine-drip, she's not set up here with the empty chair beside her own for the sake of simple joys.

Come at me, bro.

Comments

[earthborn]

She blinked once, as if trying to shutter the memories back by physical effort. Still no time to fall apart, Shepard. You'll deal with it later. If you live long enough.

She could have purged the boil; Joel would have been receptive, she was sure. Or maybe he wasn't as unjudgemental as he seemed. Regardless, she said nothing, only breathed quietly for a moment, deliberate and slow.

"I had a good reason. But it doesn't matter, now."

[aintyourdad]

"I figure, whatever we did, whatever we were, before we got here - doesn't really matter now," Joel admitted with a nod. "Some of the people here - they like to kill. To cause pain, just because they can. I don't think you're one of 'em, so I'm not too worried."

[earthborn]

"You're the fourth person today to say that to me," She couldn't argue against it, or maybe wouldn't. There were a thousand times she'd pointlessly killed someone, just because they were stubborn, or annoying, or in her way in some small capacity. She'd bragged about it, or thrown out a pissant line over their cooling corpse, and hadn't felt anything but grim triumph.

She still didn't. What did their lives matter to her, really? Nothing.

"Why in the hell is everybody in this place so damn optimistic?"

[aintyourdad]

"Optimistic?" Joel raised his eyebrows at her. "Well, that's a new one. Ellie's optimistic. My brother Tommy, he's drownin' in optimism. Hell, even Tess -"

He stopped himself, waved a hand vaguely. "I've just seen enough people like that - the ones who're sick, the ones who live just to cause pain. I'm not sayin' I think you're a saint."

[earthborn]

"Well good, because I'm not."

There were embers in her eyes when a gust of wind blew over and the shadow thrown by the tree momentarily bathed her face in a more muted light. It was over almost immediately, but after a moment, she still looked away.

"Can I buy you a coffee, Joel?" she was grasping for a topic change and the barista was coming back around, again, "Unless there's somewhere else you wanted to be."

[aintyourdad]

"I don't like saints either," Joel said with a faint snort.

He thought about Tess, and Ellie, back in the Tribute Center. Part of him wanted to spend every moment he could with Tess, and another part of him wanted to keep his distance. After a moment, he nodded. "Coffee sounds good. I take mine black."