Call It What It Is [Open]

[earthborn]

Who| Shepard and Anyone who crosses her path
What| Various things in and around the Capitol
Where| See the following options
When| Both before the reveal re: the "Gas Leak" and before the actual event portion of the event gets underway
Warnings/Notes| Probably cussing, violence, and reference to violence

♦ The Training Center:

Shepard has made a terrible habit of confrontation throughout her life, and it's earned her more than one broken bone. As it stands, she does tend to lie around insulting people a lot, and while ordinarily she exhibited that hobby by lounging at the edge of the sparring ring and mocking her fellow tributes, she wasn't feeling that playful today. No, today finds her with the punching bag, sweating and thinking, remembering another time, older days, with a friend now far beyond her.

…Also this is the second bag, she's already destroyed the first. Look, there it is, bust seams and leaking sand, just to the side. You feelin' lucky, punk?

♦ Out And About:

The nicest thing about being a bloodthirsty bitch was that when they paid you afterward, they paid you well. And that meant that when you wanted to sit on a public park bench and pull directly from the bottle, no one could stop you. No one.

But it was a nice evening, and a pleasant vintage, and anyways if these Capitol idiots had a problem, they could cross the street to avoid it, like good little patricians. She didn't have time for it. Besides, thanks to Cerberus, it'd take more than this to put her over the limit, however loose her personal standards for such a limit might be.

♦ The Gas Leak:

If anything had prepared her for the utter two-facedness of every living creature in the galaxy, known or unknown, it had been her work as a Spectre. And here, she was both pleased and chagrined to discover, was no different. But of course it was no surprise that the kind of people who achieved prominence in a society that felt blood sport was an acceptable substitute for war-debt reparations were less than honest to those over whom they held power. It was just so damn tiring, after all this time.

"Just once, I'd like to have someone screw up, and then just fix their own damn problem," she muttered, watching the grainy security footage for the third time. It was the same as the rest; a loose formation of peacekeepers, a black shadow, and then it was over almost before it had begun, and all that was left was blood and corpses. Given the circumstances, they should probably consider themselves lucky the damn things hadn't taken them alive, not that she would call that 'luck'.

If anyone wants to approach her about this, she is the picture of an open-door policy, spread out in one corner of the tribute center's main commons room.

Comments

[gluteus]

Maximus frowned. That sounded familiar, and he looked up sharply, searching, before he found the red dot in the sky. "Mars? Mars is a world, like earth? The planets are worlds?"

He looked back at her. "And it is still called Mars, even where you are from?"

[earthborn]

"You got it. Mars," This was kind of cool, actually. A galaxy of new discovering, incredulity reflected in his face, "The dirt is red there, and the dust-storms are insane. Wouldn't want to live there, but they used to have the most important archive of information in local space."

But Mars was easy, distinctive, and bright. It'd taken a long time for people to find all the rest.

"Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, Pluto, and way out there in the black, the Charon Relay, gateway to the stars," She shifted, lying a little farther back, with a satisfied air, "But we still call them by the names of the old gods, even on modern star-charts."

i fucked up, romans apparently thought the sun and moon were planets too OH WELL moving on

[gluteus]

He looked a little confused as she listed them off, but tried to nod along. When he tried to imagine Mars as she described it, all he saw was the desert.

And felt a phantom pain in his shoulder.

He raised his fingers, rubbing where the scar of the old wound lay.

"What is the 'Charon Relay'?" He asked eventually. "A 'gateway'?"

It's cool, Pluto's not even a planet anymore, except in Mass Effect.

[earthborn]

"It's...like...a slingshot, I guess. Functionally. It's what lets a ship pass from one star-system to another. The distance between stars is so vast, there's no way to traverse that far in our lifetimes, ordinarily. It's the Relays that let us get where we're going."

She thought about it for a minute, turning what little she knew over in her mind. Romans and...and what? They'd been a little light on the civ-101 in Basic. Military strategy, sure, but...

Something caught in the back of her mind, and she, "New roads, for a wider world. You getting all this? I get that most people here aren't exactly familiar with space-travel, but you're a little farther removed than most."

[gluteus]

He gently rubbed his temple with his finger tips, giving her a slightly sheepish look.

"I'm not sure I'm following completely," He admitted, picturing giant floating slingshots and roman warships being flung at distant stars. "But I believe I understand. It is difficult to grasp, Shepard, I would never... The idea that so much more exists beyond what was Rome... I never even knew about the other side of the world, let alone the other side of the stars."

[earthborn]

"Just take it slow. We've had a long time to get there— and the other side of the stars has had a long time to be there before us," she shrugged, with one shoulder and offered an apology in her smile, "Hell, the Turians have an empire out there, even in your time. Rome wasn't built in a day, right?"

But one day, men walked on the surface of the moon, and less than a century later, they made war among the stars. What a world.

[gluteus]

"No, no it was not." In fact, Rome was still being built when he had left it - he had helped to push her boundaries ever further. He let out a breath and looked back up at the sky.

"Your home. Is it like Earth?"

[earthborn]

"My home is a ship," And that was a sigh that needed a drink to water it down; she offered him the bottle, less full than half, "The Normandy. She's the fastest, stealthiest ship in the whole fleet, with the best damn crew in the Galaxy. And I'm her commander."

It's not bragging if it's true. Is it?

[gluteus]

He can't help but smile a little at the pride in her voice, and he doesn't doubt the boasting for a moment.

"What is it like? We had ships in my time, but... I imagine they must be very different, to sail between stars."

[earthborn]

"Well, y'know, cramped quarters, you breathe the same recycled air everyday, and the food is shit. Nourishing shit, but that doesn't exactly improve the flavor," The eternal gripe of every military: the marching rations, "Space is always at a premium, so unless you're the damn commanding officer you get to sleep in the same thirty bunks and the same six latrines split between more than a hundred crew. You sure as hell get to know people, packed in like that for months, or years."

Hell, for as long as Anderson had been Captain, she'd become quite intimate with those barracks. It wasn't so bad, not really, not compared to some other options. Time dulled the edges of it, and made hardship seem more kin to camaraderie than annoyance.

"You make some good friends. And every time you look out a window, it's nothing but darkness and light. The stars don't look right from down here; the air makes a veil, it obscures everything. Out there, it's so sharp and cold, like the whole damn world is a sheet of velvet with pinpricks in it. No horizon, it's beautiful, there's nothing like it. And every week it's a new star system, a new world to walk on, new people to meet...Ha, new enemies to fight! It's the best life in the world, if you can put up with it," He wasn't going to take the bottle? Fine. More for her, and maybe too much. Shepard didn't care, it was barely worth another swig, really. Piss in the ocean all you like, you'll never see it rise, "I fucking hate this place. I'm not built to live like this. Spent my whole life trying to get the hell off this planet."

[gluteus]

He listened, trying to imagine it - a great wooden Tireme, but with many decks, and a hull above and below. Where would the sails go? In his mind they lay out the sides like wings, fluttering as the ship flies in blackness.

He could completely understand her enthusiasm and he smiled, warmly.

He nearly asked about family - about whether she had children - but at the last second kept it to himself. That question would likely only bring pain. If she did, and she wished to speak of them, she would mention it.

The smile faded as hers did, however.

"You are not a slave," he said solemnly. "It is a hard adjustment."

[earthborn]

He could have asked. Growing up, she'd invented so many parents. The Alliance Admiral who'd thought her KIA during some tragic event and would be overjoyed to find her alive, would elevate her to status, love, and freedom from hardship like a fairytale princess. The tragically murdered family, three siblings, a farmhouse, and a dog; they'd loved her unconditionally, once. But the truth was that her earliest memories were of the streets, and there had never been any loving family, nor any reasonable excuse. No peace, not for her.

No children, except those that she took under her wing, and these people were no more children than she was. Shepard would probably be dead before she ever got the chance to want them for herself.

You are not a slave.

Fucking Batarians. She remembered reading new reports about Batarian slavers. Remembered Purgatory, and the way the words felt in her mouth; You're nothing but a two-chit slaver and I've had enough of it! Cerberus, Sanctuary, the Broker, the Reapers; so narrowly had she slipped the noose, and so many times, that she'd gotten cocky, come to believe it was fate. Not this time.

"Maybe, but I'm sure as hell not free," She'd gotten lucky so far, with a lot of strings attached, but it wasn't to be mistaken for preference, "What about you, Maximus? Got some deep dark history you want to air out? Surely you didn't come out here to watch me get drunk and talk astrophysics."

[gluteus]

He chuckled, lowly, and shook his head, looking up to the stars.

"My history is just that. Deep, and dark, and forgotten. I come here to remember, or perhaps I come here to forget. I haven't decided." He looked back at her and offered her a slightly pained smile. "It is natural for a man to long for home, as we do, but whereas you may return to your stars, my home was destroyed long before I came here."

[earthborn]

She couldn't help but return the bitter smile, an echo of what she heard in his laugh. Destruction and death, scorched earth, and the shadow of the Reaper. Propriety said not to ask; to offer condolences and move on: life's a bitch, and then you're dead.

"Well that's just vague enough to raise questions," Shepard had never been very good at manners, "You wanna talk about it? Gaurantee you, I've worse stories. It's good to get it off your chest."

[gluteus]

He shook his head, slowly.

"It is best left where it lies," He murmured, at first, though after a pause he reached out for her bottle again, took a long gulp, and then continued. "I thought - I still think, sometimes - that all I can do is find myself an honourable death, so that I might regain something of what I had. But I am forced to realise that here even death does not grant peace. What I had is lost, forever, and I will never reclaim it."

[earthborn]

"Yeah, I get that," He reminded her of another friend, in that moment, all burning hate and long-buried grief like a tell-tale heart under the floorboards of his bones; Shepard gave up the bottle without argument. Javik had asked her the same question, once, and she gave Maximus her answer now, as it had been then, "Some things belong in the past. What's important now, is what you do with what you have left."

[gluteus]

He looked at her, offering somewhat of a roguish smile.

"Yes. Though of all the things that belong in the past, I am certainly chief of them." He handed the bottle back.