[Open] Not The Absence, But The Ability To Cope

[earthborn]

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.

Comments

[battlesleep]

He slumped a little as she let him go, kept his gaze on her face because - he had been certain he'd lost her, when she left for the Alliance. They would not let her out again, not for some time, and he did not have any of that. But now she was here, and he did not think it was hope he was feeling but it was certainly something pleased.

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."

[earthborn]

"That doesn't make it right," They'd all had worse, from Cerberus, from their own lives. She wavered, fists clenched, wanting to reach out, to support him— that damn cough. She remembered his descriptions of the pain, and winced. Thane deserved better; she'd hit him.

"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."

[battlesleep]

"Under the circumstances, your reaction was understandable." Dismissing, still. He knew why she had done it, given what he thought he understood now. Under a similar circumstance - if he had known Shepard had died before her return.

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."

[earthborn]

He could dismiss it, but she wasn't going to forget it anytime soon; chagrined, she bit down the rest. This wasn't time to argue blame, of all things. Blame the Kepral's, if anything.

"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."

[battlesleep]

His pace quickened almost as soon as she fell in step with him, eager to be out of the public eye. He had missed her, more than he had thought he would. That their reunion had to be here was not something he welcomed, but he had thought he would never see her again.

"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.

[earthborn]

"You caught that one, huh?" Of course he had; Thane hadn't gotten this far by being unobservant, and she'd snarled it into his face with murderous intent. Fantastic.

"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.

[battlesleep]

He just nodded to that, carefully. Catching it had not been that difficult, but he knew that neither had it been meant to be understood as he had.

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."

[earthborn]

She looked at him then, confused, and backed through the door without looking. No, of course he couldn't have known.

"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?"

[battlesleep]

He paused, absorbing all of that, trying to sort through the information he had just been inadvertently given, determine what of it he wanted to understood and what was best left for the undetermined and nebulous future.

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?"

[earthborn]

"Hell, Thane," she hesitated, lingering, just a moment more in the feel of his pulse against her hand, trying to memorize the moment. Later, she would remember only that it was warm, and it had weight.

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."

[battlesleep]

He exhaled as she let him go, closed his eyes against the last weight of her hand. What she felt, here and now - it was clear that his death had been painful to her. That this place would therefore also be unpleasant seemed a given.

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."