Commander Jane Shepard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
earthborn) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2013-05-11 01:31 pm
earthborn) wrote in thecapitol2013-05-11 01:31 pm
Entry tags:
[Open] Not The Absence, But The Ability To Cope
Who| Shepard and Anyone Else who might come across her
What| Shep wanders around the capitol a bit, getting her bearings
Where| Random street locations (choose your own)
When| The day of her arrival
Warnings/Notes| Possibly language
This was, surprisingly, the absolutely strangest thing that had ever happened to Shepard. Blood sport, she'd had that, in both its clean, relatively safe, publicly sanctioned form and otherwise. Opulence like this could be found on any one of a dozen Asari worlds, and plenty of places on the Presidium as well. Even kidnapping, so far as this experience went, was...not entirely outside of her experiences. But all at once?
All it needed was a clone imposter, and it would officially make her day.
Damn, but if it wasn't surreal, and she had to stop and stare, looking up at the glittering high-rises and all the careless, meandering people. It was as if war had never come here. No Reapers, no hardship. Not six hours ago, to her mind, they'd hit Earth running and had been fighting uphill against Reaper abominations ever since, and then—
And then suddenly; this.
The skies were blue. There was the smell of lilacs in the air. Nobody was screaming. It made no sense, despite the explanation, and there was no way to recover from the whiplash of moving in one day from the grim end of the world, to the Capitol of civilization and indulgence. Even if it came with that familiar undercurrent of wrongness. Shit.
"Shit," she muttered, looking across an open expense of grass that divided a skyscraper from a cheerful little restaurant, watching a pair of clearly-involved teenages walking hand in hand. They were almost alien, the way they dressed, the ease with which they moved, living without fear. But it was peaceful. Happy.
It was the strangest thing that had ever happened to her.
What| Shep wanders around the capitol a bit, getting her bearings
Where| Random street locations (choose your own)
When| The day of her arrival
Warnings/Notes| Possibly language
This was, surprisingly, the absolutely strangest thing that had ever happened to Shepard. Blood sport, she'd had that, in both its clean, relatively safe, publicly sanctioned form and otherwise. Opulence like this could be found on any one of a dozen Asari worlds, and plenty of places on the Presidium as well. Even kidnapping, so far as this experience went, was...not entirely outside of her experiences. But all at once?
All it needed was a clone imposter, and it would officially make her day.
Damn, but if it wasn't surreal, and she had to stop and stare, looking up at the glittering high-rises and all the careless, meandering people. It was as if war had never come here. No Reapers, no hardship. Not six hours ago, to her mind, they'd hit Earth running and had been fighting uphill against Reaper abominations ever since, and then—
And then suddenly; this.
The skies were blue. There was the smell of lilacs in the air. Nobody was screaming. It made no sense, despite the explanation, and there was no way to recover from the whiplash of moving in one day from the grim end of the world, to the Capitol of civilization and indulgence. Even if it came with that familiar undercurrent of wrongness. Shit.
"Shit," she muttered, looking across an open expense of grass that divided a skyscraper from a cheerful little restaurant, watching a pair of clearly-involved teenages walking hand in hand. They were almost alien, the way they dressed, the ease with which they moved, living without fear. But it was peaceful. Happy.
It was the strangest thing that had ever happened to her.
no subject
For a long moment there was silence, trying to just drink in her presence before he said anything, before whatever was causing the expression on her face had to be said. He had missed her more than words could say, even those of his native tongue.
"How long have you been here?" It seemed like the question to ask - he could so easily have missed her. That was a painful thought - one street over, one block further along, and he would not have seen her.
no subject
Shepard seized him, the imposter by the collar and turned, pivoting on one foot and with all her strength threw him into the wall. It was stone, of a variety, smooth and white and very pretty unless someone spilled something on it. Shepard had only the vaguest memory of what color drell bleed, but maybe it was time to remind herself. That'd feel pretty good.
"You son of a bitch!" She came again, vicious and uncompromising, catching him on the rebound and shoving him into the wall with both fists and all the promise of violence she could bring to bear.
She'd kill him. It'd be hard, he looked so very like Thane, but this couldn't be allowed. No more clones, no more tricks, and the world could damn well stop shitting on her just this once, "If you think you're going to come to me pretending to be Thane Krios, desecrating his memory, then so help me god have you got another thought coming. I'm sick of this, do you hear me? You have ten seconds to tell me who sent you— Talk."
no subject
He could not lift his hands against her. Not Shepard. He had never touched her with anything but well meaning and he would not change that now. "Siha -" he began, a protest and a question at once, but the next words she spoke were suddenly much more enlightening. Others had spoken of disparate points in time, people who came in from a further point in time than their friends. His memory - he was dead, to her.
What was there to say? How could he convince her? He shook his head, let his hands remain at his sides and ignored the rasp in his voice that was heavier than normal when he spoke. "Nobody sent me. I remember the Collector base, the trip back to Alliance space. Being let off at the Citadel. And then I was here."
no subject
God damn it, why can't anything ever be simple anymore?
Shepard was educated well enough that she could sort out what he was getting at— after all, if the Capitol had told the truth, then why the hell cloudn't it travel through time as well as...but then, how long had he been here? No. No, she wasn't going to be taken in so damn easily!
"Fine," She hissed, "Once chance. Prove it."
no subject
"Be alive with me tonight." Eyes still fixed on hers, trying to communicate what he was not sure he had the words for. "Siha, please." He did not know how to convince her, only knew that he had to.
no subject
This was reality.
Staring at his face from a few inches away, suddenly the adrenaline was doing something else entirely, and it hurt. She knew her face had probably done something interesting as well, but only he would see it. No one else knew that— not even Kolyat, who'd carried his father's messages to her with his own hands. This wasn't some trick, the Capitol might be malevolent, but it was true— not just another time, or place, but another world. One with Thane in it, alive. Breathing became difficult— but she let him go, stepped back warily, and watched him recover.
"Thane?" Maybe she hadn't given Garrus enough credit. She spent two years dead and he was barely surprised to see her again. Thane hadn't been gone half a year and she couldn't seem to get a grip.
Get a grip, Shepard!
"I— sorry," It all seemed so inadequate, "You alright? I got you kinda good there."
no subject
He coughed, briefly, and then pushed off from the wall, forced himself not to immediately reach out to hold her. They were still in public, and certainly everywhere here was public but there were places with slightly more privacy to them. "I've had worse. There is no need to worry about me, siha."
Or, there was no need that he could see. He was as well as could be expected. "I would - may we find somewhere private? We have much to discuss, if you have only just arrived."
no subject
"Yeah. Privacy sounds good," for a sufficiently loose definition of private, of course— but there was no escaping that, not really. Might as well just get used to it.
She was staring, but it was hard not to. He was alive, moving, and talking, not lying too still on a hospital mattress, or a flat image on the screen. Jane could see his breathing, and it felt like a miracle not to be facing an urn of ashes, a photograph and a lily. Thane.
Get a grip, Shepard! She looked away.
"I only got here a couple of hours ago."
no subject
He shook his head, stepped closer and nodded in the direction of his rooms. "Then we do indeed have much to speak on. Come with me?"
Her gaze was unwavering and somewhat unsettling, too much that he did not want to see in her eyes, and yet when she looked away he felt immediately somehow less. "I have been here something close to a month."
no subject
"Of course," she kept it behind her teeth, expression carefully neutral. Half of her life had been spent lying, one way or another, and it was hard sometimes, but she had a damn good poker face.
"A month?" she turned to walk with him, found it easier somehow to focus when they were moving. He'd been dead longer than that, and it was strange to think about him living here instead, like all she'd had to do all along was push aside the curtain and it'd all have been a dream. More like a nightmare, this place, "Huh."
no subject
"You said - desecrating his memory." He asked as soon as they had turned into the hallway leading to his rooms, his gaze fixed unwaveringly ahead. This he needed to know, to understand where she was coming from. "Am I right to presume that I am dead when you are from?"
The look on her face as she had said those words still rested in his gut like a stone. That he had put it there, however unintentionally, did not sit easily with him.
no subject
"Yeah. A while ago. It was..."
She sighed, looking anywhere but at him, which meant ahead. The Capitol might be a glittering gem but this particular hall left a lot to be desired in the realm of convenient distractions.
"It's a long story, and Cerberus is involved," breathe, "The funeral was a few weeks ago. You want details?"
A novel chance, that, to hear the story of your own funeral.
no subject
And he was right. He did not really know how to feel about that, other than that the tone of her voice leaves him cold and tired, weary of the disease that will leave her like that.
"They are unnecessary. I have long been prepared." He could say it calmly, at least, nothing to indicate his unease, and he reached the door and held it open for her. Privacy, within reach now, and he had never craved it as much as he did now. "I am - sorry, though. It was never my intention to hurt you."
no subject
"Thane..." She stopped herself until he'd shut the door and turned back, put a hand against his face, to force his attention, to push back the guilt, "Don't. Don't you apologize to me. Besides it— it wasn't like that. I'm the one who should be apologizing; if I'd been faster, or..."
Stupid. Stupid to wonder. If she'd taken the shot, if she'd run just a little faster, been just a little smarter, gotten there first. Seen the betrayal coming. If Anderson had been the councilor, would it all have gone differently? Thane hadn't known her more than a handful of minutes before he'd explained that he was dying, and in the end it'd been that damned Cerberus bastard that did him in.
"I don't have a lot of regrets, but you are never going to be one of them. Alright?"
no subject
Some place not here.
"Do not blame yourself." He closed the door firmly behind him, locked it. There was no reason for any to interrupt them now and here. "I have lived a full life."
But that was not enough, and not quite the right thing to say.
"What about this place would you wish to know?"
no subject
Slowly, she let him go.
"Well the only thing I do know is that there's some kind of deathmatch with my name on it," Back to business, all hard edge and denial, "Everything else is...kinda sketchy, at best."
no subject
What they were now, in this moment, was something else entirely, and not something he knew how to address.
"That is the situation. They require that we fight to the death for their entertainment, and then they ask our friendship. I cannot discover how they had the power to remove us from our homes."