[There's more than just an edge of sarcasm there - because if anyone knows, shouldn't it be her? She can taste the flat bitter taste of dark rancid water on the back of her tongue under the bite of the booze; can remember the creeping sensation of black eyes on her and the cold of the mark and the vicious cut of a knife in skin (and she can't breathe; the black tightening like a vice), and the shape of a small girl's hands in her own. Or a boy's. Had they gone out in a dark, blinking void - there and gone -, or had it been an exploding shuttle?
And because it hadn't mattered why she'd done what she had, said what she did on the Neheda - it was still insubordination. Bullshit, maybe, but her opinion doesn't actually mean anything just like she can say she's using PKN7 to prepare a bunch of hopeless cases a hundred times, but that's not going to stop anyone from thinking she's gunning for something bigger. Because she's sitting here, having this conversation, and the question Jasper's always going to be asking is 'Why are you being so nice to me?'
There's a whiff of disappointment there too in how she takes her glass up again, the look she settles on him - like maybe she'd expected or wanted better. Instead what she gets is raising her glass back to her lips and downing the rest of its contents.]
[ It's all vicious accusation where he doesn't know how to do anything else but fight. Looks flat at her and her disappointment, he doesn't have it in him to care.
Isn't that just like her. He doesn't want to have this conversation. She's making him. Isn't that just like -- ; ]
Did you come here just to make me admit I don't know what I am doing?
[ Slow breath out, because that's the truth of it, isn't it. The glass is discarded like she had poisoned it. Pushed from him to the middle of the table in a slide that extends out from a flick of fingers. It could shatter and break and he could not care. The magic on his hand so bright, bright, bright, in threat and in recoil. Anticipation and it feeds, it's feeding down. There's too many hollows in these words to not stretch out and fill up the spaces. Splashing blue over skin and making little reflections and distortions through the vodka. ]
[The difference is that she says something off by a series of degrees and he does nothing to correct her; he does the same and Shepard is like a dog with its jaw clamped down on his throat - catches the discrepancy and shakes until something tears free. So determined to be solid in this that for once the cold blue light and the prickle of energy on the air, the taste of iron and rot in watering in her mouth from it doesn't find a finger of fear in her, no knot of tension she has to swallow down. No clench in the muscle of her jaw or rabbiting thrill of her pulse. She catches the glass before it slides too far - snaps:]
No. I'm here to make you admit that you know more than you lead on. [Not unaware, not so instinctual, not as automatic as he pretends to be she thinks. Not always. Not like this. Because there are pictures pinned to the rover's fridge and there had been fondness in his voice over the jars littering every available flat surface; carefully cleaned dishes and the muted sting of domesticity in everything from folded clothes to the pair of animals uncertainly perched in his lap. If this was the only evidence she had (it isn't), it would still be enough to convince her; this isn't what not trying looks like.] And you know you can't do whatever this is without backup. You know either something is going to happen to them or you're going to happen. So if you give half a shit about what happens to Khezek and-- [Terra. Who else lived here? Wilson. And-- (that carved bone sits heavy in her flak jacket pocket)] --whoever else, then you'll utilize me.
[And if that isn't a fucking olive branch, she wouldn't know how to extend one. Never mind how her grip tightens on both glasses, bringing her own down to join its mate - knuckles ashy from the stubborn press of her fingers.]
[ He can feel those teeth in his throat and he wants to kick and bite back, sink claws into her chest ( just below beating, beating heart that he hates her for because it's lying in its false consistency ) and wriggle into ribs and those thoughts are wrong, those thoughts are why she is right. Catches himself in them and swallows down all rough. He cannot bare this, he doesn't want to say any of it to anyone. Shows in the furrowing of his brow and the way he looks away too sharp.
Skittish, all hands curled up to hide a shake, takes stock like this is battle and focuses on this. On details, on the things that matter. Shattered, shattered, shattered and the days have been too much.
It's too close and he doesn't know how to speak about it without the fear in the words, in trusting. The betrayal went too deep, that way. ]
How do I know this isn't you just using me and this -- [ takes a slow breath, trying to work out what to say or do. ( Poor Emily! ) ] -- if it is, I swear, I swear I will never forgive you for damning her. I wasn't there and I promised her she would never be alone again. [ Eleven and she'd had her last birthday locked in a dark room with whores and sick twisted men and he's trying to remember here, why it's so hard to not just tip himself out, because he doesn't trust, he can't trust, and if they had any sense, they would never trust him either. Because he will butcher, so many and everything and all of it because he was asked. that's all they had done, hadn't they? The loyalists. A particular man is needed for this sort of work. ] If you mean to just use me and kill me I will make you listen to everyone of her screams, do you understand? I will crawl my way back, and I will -- [ Firn whined, all high concerned noise. ] I will not, I cannot fail her again. I'll have nothing left, it's all for her. All of it.
[ it's madness, it's all she was right about in him, and it's skittering out of him like rats from a sinking ship, trickling and pouring over everything it can reach for. Hungry and teeming, looking for dry land. If there is a filter needed, it's for this. Yes, yes, he was going to happen to them, he knows that. he's already done that. To both of them. Little and young and they were going to fracture and the only consolation was that if not him, this place would with enough time. There was no kindness, here.
Pauses, stops, breaths, babbling cuts itself off at the start and tries to work out the sense of what he truly meant to say, between desperate threats that aren't for her. Out, in, again. ] Forgive me that's -- not for you. [ Fingers loosen, curl around the edge of the table. ]
[Tastes like iron and salt and something rotten, like she's watching him drag himself from (or into) black mud and tar - an ugly, vicious fear unfolding in the lines of him, in the hot flicker of the mark crackling around a closed fist. She stills. She breathes in. She isn't afraid. Not even as it spills out of him - like she's wrenched a knife back and this is what comes sloughing out after it (she's a soldier; regret for that kind of thing comes secondary to the liberation of not being the one on the ground).
There's something about the raw way he stops - inhales - sharpens and then gives that makes her mouth water. And he's talking to her now. She swallows, exhales by degrees and glances down to find her grip on the glasses has gone loose. She lets them go entirely. Reaching for the bottle, Shepard tops off his glass - pours herself another - and the rights the bottle with a small click of glass on metal.
Nauseatingly satisfied, she slides his glass back.]
[ There's nothing for it now, they've reached this point, all brittle bits and pieces all over the folding table and battlefields were cleaner in that way. There were rules to engagement, not the ones they seemed to write in the sand just to destroy all over again and she says that like it's something so easily done, like it's something he understands how to do.
He doesn't, but he thinks he can try to work it out as he catches the glass and where he sipped it slow, now he matches her, he takes the drink and tips to empty it in a mouthful. Not enough and where she puts the bottle down he takes it up and it's some small measure of taking back for himself where she's shredded too vulnerable bits of him across the safest place he has. Pulling it all out and he unscrews the lid on the vodka. Flicking it away in an idle gesture and put the bottle to his lips. Stubbornly meeting her eye in it as he in measured swallows of a man drowning, drank whatever was left in it, at least until the gesture meant he couldn't, anymore.
Sterilizing an internal wound maybe, but the infection spread too long for that. But this is how you treat patients, isn't it? Get them so drunk they can't feel when the blade goes in deep, deep, deep.
Eventually, when it's empty, he puts it down, and stands after putting the two small creatures back onto the table. Hand wiping at his mouth, all rough scratch of three day old stubble and the rake back of fingers in his hair. Barely phased for however much it is, but all the same he steadies himself, shifts to go to the messiest of the bunks, where there is a suspiciously large amount of money to dig around underneath it for something.
Another bottle. Another bottle of the same clear liquid that spells out the same thing. Unscrews it too with the crack of a seal being broken as his hand covered the neck of a body, considering it as he walks back. Quick when he's fighting, but like this, worn down like this, he favors one side slightly, and his steps are slower and catching, as if it's just one more pain he's gotten used to existing with. Takes a slower sip before setting it and himself down again across from her once more.
If she ever kills him with anything less than her teeth in his throat and her nails in his chest, he'll be disappointed. ]
This comes from a place called Tyvia, where I am from. [ pauses, elbow braced on the table and his ankles hooking together under the chair. ] It's a frozen wasteland in the summer and a sunless white nightmare in the winter. [ brief look up. ] Ask your questions, if you have any then.
[It's her only bottle, half drunk before she'd even acquired it; she hasn't had the personal pleasure of more than a drink or two in her own time before bringing it here. Watching him drain it dry should be an irritant. But let him, she thinks. Better a tool than a distraction. Attention fixed on him (he's looking at her like there's a challenge in it and she can rise to that all the same), she nurses her own drink with more patience than she's shown all evening. And it tastes less bitter somehow when sipped. But maybe that's just the sweet, gut low satisfaction talking. If nothing else, she knows winning when she sees it.
So she's not going to ask questions when the bottle is emptied, when Corvo moves to stand and then across the rover. This is all just aftermath. There's still liquor in her glass when he returns with the second bottle. But if she has expectations, an invitation isn't one of them; she doesn't have a mental list of questions prepared, can't think to formulate any but one on the fly:]
You've been on Red since you dropped. So how'd you get involved in Blue's kill order mission on Ajna?
[It's blunt, breaking, shows her hand when her track record is to play close to the chest. But screw it; in a way she already has what she came here for - can feel it in how he held the bottle, in the way he settles in the chair. Why keep that she knows a secret?]
[ He supposes theirs is a rather repetitive dance, the back and forth, like the drinks sliding of the table and the way she never, never settles for anything less than asking the things he wants to answer least. All barbed wire on knuckles where they strike high and if he really bothers, he thinks he can taste blood. But even this, is a record all stuck on the same few notes and maybe it's the same back at her, probably, return for the last volley fired where she laughed at him for digging around at her wounds and only found scar tissue instead.
Must be that then, and there is plenty raw around that mission, for things he'll never talk about not for orders but because he'd sworn and the one that has even less to do with his own emotions - except that was not true, was it? He had removed himself in the way that Fiona had of him. He was just a blade, it was not his position to care and the less anyone ever thought he did the better. It let him do the things for them that they could not do themselves. It might be falling on his sword except that was what he had been good at that he does not even stop to think about it. ]
Really, Commander? Why do you think? You know what they call me -- [ pause, swallow, no, she doesn't. He's just another here and no better or worse than than the rest. She has no idea what they call him. ] What my skills are listed as. Why do you think it happened? Terra was blue, at the time. You know his feelings for her, and he wanted to be again with his Shahni. [ Says the name as perfect imitation of how Jasper said it, but other than that, it's flat -- well almost, eyebrow raised, shaking his head at her briefly. It was a mess, a damn mess, but it had done what it needed, though they couldn't breath a word of it. They had spared Terra the worst of the punishment. ] You've spoken to her, you think she capable of such a thing?
[ The simplest, laid bare facts. They were themselves, not very complicated at all. He figures she'll piece the rest together from there without him saying anything. ]
[Which is, more or less, similar to the most likely scenario she'd told herself excepting - maybe - one point that catches her attention like a snag in a jumper, the flash of light off the top of an enemy's helmet.]
She doesn't know.
[It's not a question. Not really. Her hand and the glass in it, liquor only half gone, hovers briefly near the shape of her mouth. But it's not really something she needs answered; she doesn't know Terra well outside of pt - but seeing the girl a few times a day to run her in circles is enough that Shepard knows she's kind. Gentle, even (which isn't a word she has any real fondness for, especially here).
There's an acerbic, frank piece of her that makes her want to say 'Exactly who do you think you're helping by shielding her?' - thinks out every syllable, even. Because what good was it to pretend things were different? To be willfully ignorant? But instead she strains a sip of low, bitter alcohol through her teeth and swallows both down. Taps her forefinger one, twice against the glass.]
[ He gives up on the glass, on the civilized nature, she has him where she wants him with his back to the wall all snarling and vicious, because that's all she left him. Because he is expecting that response, because Wade had been furious with him, hadn't reconciled with him until he had explained -- about Emily, about his own desperation to do anything they required to have her back and safe again. Would never risk being asked to do something and not doing it.
He'd lost his honour, what did he care and she seems like she spat on what most would consider good manners at the best of times so he swigs ugly from the bottle like, maybe, if he didn't know better, he could get drunk still. Shakes his head like a wet dog at her. ]
She does, at least most of it. [ clears his throat when it comes out a croaking whisper from the worst of the drink and then speaks again a little more clearly. ] Some of it's gag ordered, but she walked out when Wade and I were... cleaning up.
[ Makes a gesture, absent of him looking at it, around the rover. ]
[Well. At least there's that - the knowledge that if she didn't do what she was required, someone else would have to. She hopes it's something that's stuck for the girl. Better to do things like that yourself. At least there's a kind of security in that - knowing you did whatever you could.
She sets the glass down on the table between them. It's empty now, though she doesn't gesture for him to top her off with the bottle he's drinking from. She can feel the loose hum of the drink in the back of her throat, in the set of her shoulders and the idea of getting buzzed in Corvo Attano's company isn't exactly appealing. There are better people, better places to get some real drinking done.
(Which, hell, she might look in to that.)]
Good.
[How cruel is that? To approve of those circumstances? When he says 'cleaning up', he means dealing with Jasper's corpse. But it isn't like the boy's dead now, so as far as she's concerned it's settled. Any potential hurt over it doesn't exactly have grounds to exist anymore.]
And they let her get away with that? The officers?
[ It hadn't been pretty, the worst sort of argument, the one of brutal truths and unpleasant realities. They'd been the ones to make her understand just what she was facing by refusing orders, any orders. Showed her just that -- if she didn't someone would, and it would stain. Closes his eyes and this rover's layout is close enough that he can lay it out all over again.
Suspects Terra still can too. ]
She was moved teams, if that's what you mean. Consider unfit for Blue requirements. It's not a surprise, really, and probably was for the best. [ He swallows on another mouthful of vodka, his hands itching all over again with the memory that was burned into them. Another layer of blood, as bad as hers now, for what it meant. ] The rest is... ordered. Most especially against Terra, she's never allowed to know what influence we had in what happened to her. [ She had to live with her choices, and they had to as well. ]
[From everything she knows of the CDC and its officers, being bumped from one team to the other sounds like the most mild form of disciplinary action there is. Could it even really be called as much? Terra wasn't losing anything be being moved over from Blue - less demotion and more lateral transfer. It gives her pause, prompts a narrow look in Attano's direction. 'The rest', meaning there's more to the deal. If she had to hazard a guess, someone made a deal or a trade to get Terra off the proverbial hook. What had been offered? How big a price tag was it? The officers, Mother ship especially in her mind, aren't exactly known for their flexibility, any keenness to compromise.
But whatever it is isn't something she's going to pry out of him thanks to the gag order, so she doesn't bother asking after it. Instead she shifts back in her chair, studies him for a long moment. Drums her fingers against the metal table top. When she breaks the silence, its because she isn't interested in leaving it long enough to start filling it with questions of his own.]
Right. Well. I should go.
[And she catches the back of the chair, levering herself up and out of it without any fanfare. She got what she came for.]
[ He barely knew those details, they weren't his to know. He had just been told she will be spared the worst of it and that -- he guesses they had made enough of a point to Terra, about loyalty between them all. If it had not existed before, it did now. And there's that too real pang there, of loyalty, of the need to protect. They are not his duty, they are not the collection of things that he cannot call wife and daughter, but they have kept him solid, they have kept them there, and he grips that with fingers like talons. Because they opened the door and let him back in.
That means the world, and it's more than he deserves. He thinks Jessamine would want that, but she cannot tell him anymore. He doesn't know what she would think of him, anymore. ]
Of course. [ Habits, when a lady stands ( except no, not that process, she's a commander, he has always been a commander probably. he cannot think of her in another description of terms except the ones that beget duty and it is expected to stand when a superior officer does ), that he does too. Arms braced and he jerks his head at the bottle. ] Take it. Fair. [ He expects her to refuse, but he knows he'd be remiss if he didn't. ]
[She pauses, hand sturdy at the chair back, and drops her eyes to the bottle on the table between them. Back to him - a long measuring moment. Like a game of cards, especially rewarding, she's taken him for all he has. Does he really deserve for her to make off with his bottle too? Is there any real sport in that?
She decides she doesn't care if there is. Or tells herself it's more game this way - if he's an opponent she's trounced up and down the deck, she can respect final wishes all the same. So after a moment Shepard leans forward, wraps her hand around the neck of the bottle and opts to accept. She hefts it, either a nonverbal assessment of value or in thanks.]
Fair.
[She nods, crisp - the kind of dismissive cut of chin and brow that's all military. And then she goes, leaving the swaddled domesticity of the rover and drawing the hatch shut behind her with a hollow clang. Simple as that.]
[ Do they sit in long tables and plan war where she comes from? It feels as that, the arranged battles between lords. Yes, we will chose this field. No, there will be no issue. Of course we will allow death rites. The clinical way men are died by old men, trading chess pieces of lives across the board and he cannot think of this better or worse if the board is writ in water, and the piece just one boy instead of thousands. He was never supposed to have to think about any of it.
His hands brace on the edge of the table, and he's still a savage angry thing, he has been for so long now he does not know how to cease to be, as he watches her. Hunched shoulders and tense muscles. Flat behind the eyes in the ways that matter right then. But then again, maybe he's embellishing on what he wished he was, it would be easier if it was. But he follows her and he follows her and none of it was enough. She's right, Anders is right and he thinks he wishes he'd never spoke to them, raised a voice to them, thought to do better because he didn't know how to do what they asked.
But it doesn't make it less his fault. No amount of self loathing and self realization left him with the faintest idea of what to do with himself. So he waits, waits as she walks away and he counts everyone of her footsteps and when she closes the door behind her, he switches to the yellow sick haze of magic instead to watch until she fades from that too.
Spirits, he hates her. ( Why did she have to be so much like -- ? )
( Why did she have to lift her head at that angle like she expected rooms to bow to her, why did she have to stare him down like that, why must she always push too hard at things he wasn't ready to give? )
( why couldn't he refuse her a single blasted thing? )
With no option to do otherwise, he takes the simplest path, the familiar path. Destruction, but Wade's not around, nothing to plunge a blade into, no where to break his bones with low hits, no one to shatter his own ribs back. She could have at least hit him. She could have at least broken his jaw. She spent so long ripping pieces of him out he wants so much to sink thumb and forefinger into the hinges of her jaw to pull it open and reach inside to pick out the bits of him left there, so sure he find it between those pretty little teeth and he sucks a breath in low.
The glasses, the bottle set on the table, the creatures skittering away from the heavy ugly smell of his magic, all burning air and river water, and he can only think so much to mind Jasper's work ( the mindless way he perfected dancing over Emily's dolls in her playroom and Jessamine's parliamentary papers as he set a glass of wine down beside her, so too he minds them ). Fragile still in a second, and the sound he wants to make should be vicious, it should be wretched but he cannot make it, just a wheezing choking breath as the magic bubbles up, and he flings a hand, the harsh burst of wind throwing the bottle and the glasses across the small room. Shatters the bottle if not the cups, brilliant brilliant shards in a loud crash and the and he sinks back down. Breathing hard for the effort if not the bitterness.
Too much until Firn comes back closer and presses in near him. Gathers his calm back in slow measures, and he gathers her up, small in his hands and presses his face against her soft fur. Another breath, another moment to recollect. Settles Firn down again and goes about moving to clean up. Carefully wipe away every detail until there was time to work out what to do. ]
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[There's more than just an edge of sarcasm there - because if anyone knows, shouldn't it be her? She can taste the flat bitter taste of dark rancid water on the back of her tongue under the bite of the booze; can remember the creeping sensation of black eyes on her and the cold of the mark and the vicious cut of a knife in skin (and she can't breathe; the black tightening like a vice), and the shape of a small girl's hands in her own. Or a boy's. Had they gone out in a dark, blinking void - there and gone -, or had it been an exploding shuttle?
And because it hadn't mattered why she'd done what she had, said what she did on the Neheda - it was still insubordination. Bullshit, maybe, but her opinion doesn't actually mean anything just like she can say she's using PKN7 to prepare a bunch of hopeless cases a hundred times, but that's not going to stop anyone from thinking she's gunning for something bigger. Because she's sitting here, having this conversation, and the question Jasper's always going to be asking is 'Why are you being so nice to me?'
There's a whiff of disappointment there too in how she takes her glass up again, the look she settles on him - like maybe she'd expected or wanted better. Instead what she gets is raising her glass back to her lips and downing the rest of its contents.]
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Isn't that just like her. He doesn't want to have this conversation. She's making him. Isn't that just like -- ; ]
Did you come here just to make me admit I don't know what I am doing?
[ Slow breath out, because that's the truth of it, isn't it. The glass is discarded like she had poisoned it. Pushed from him to the middle of the table in a slide that extends out from a flick of fingers. It could shatter and break and he could not care. The magic on his hand so bright, bright, bright, in threat and in recoil. Anticipation and it feeds, it's feeding down. There's too many hollows in these words to not stretch out and fill up the spaces. Splashing blue over skin and making little reflections and distortions through the vodka. ]
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No. I'm here to make you admit that you know more than you lead on. [Not unaware, not so instinctual, not as automatic as he pretends to be she thinks. Not always. Not like this. Because there are pictures pinned to the rover's fridge and there had been fondness in his voice over the jars littering every available flat surface; carefully cleaned dishes and the muted sting of domesticity in everything from folded clothes to the pair of animals uncertainly perched in his lap. If this was the only evidence she had (it isn't), it would still be enough to convince her; this isn't what not trying looks like.] And you know you can't do whatever this is without backup. You know either something is going to happen to them or you're going to happen. So if you give half a shit about what happens to Khezek and-- [Terra. Who else lived here? Wilson. And-- (that carved bone sits heavy in her flak jacket pocket)] --whoever else, then you'll utilize me.
[And if that isn't a fucking olive branch, she wouldn't know how to extend one. Never mind how her grip tightens on both glasses, bringing her own down to join its mate - knuckles ashy from the stubborn press of her fingers.]
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Skittish, all hands curled up to hide a shake, takes stock like this is battle and focuses on this. On details, on the things that matter. Shattered, shattered, shattered and the days have been too much.
It's too close and he doesn't know how to speak about it without the fear in the words, in trusting. The betrayal went too deep, that way. ]
How do I know this isn't you just using me and this -- [ takes a slow breath, trying to work out what to say or do. ( Poor Emily! ) ] -- if it is, I swear, I swear I will never forgive you for damning her. I wasn't there and I promised her she would never be alone again. [ Eleven and she'd had her last birthday locked in a dark room with whores and sick twisted men and he's trying to remember here, why it's so hard to not just tip himself out, because he doesn't trust, he can't trust, and if they had any sense, they would never trust him either. Because he will butcher, so many and everything and all of it because he was asked. that's all they had done, hadn't they? The loyalists. A particular man is needed for this sort of work. ] If you mean to just use me and kill me I will make you listen to everyone of her screams, do you understand? I will crawl my way back, and I will -- [ Firn whined, all high concerned noise. ] I will not, I cannot fail her again. I'll have nothing left, it's all for her. All of it.
[ it's madness, it's all she was right about in him, and it's skittering out of him like rats from a sinking ship, trickling and pouring over everything it can reach for. Hungry and teeming, looking for dry land. If there is a filter needed, it's for this. Yes, yes, he was going to happen to them, he knows that. he's already done that. To both of them. Little and young and they were going to fracture and the only consolation was that if not him, this place would with enough time. There was no kindness, here.
Pauses, stops, breaths, babbling cuts itself off at the start and tries to work out the sense of what he truly meant to say, between desperate threats that aren't for her. Out, in, again. ] Forgive me that's -- not for you. [ Fingers loosen, curl around the edge of the table. ]
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There's something about the raw way he stops - inhales - sharpens and then gives that makes her mouth water. And he's talking to her now. She swallows, exhales by degrees and glances down to find her grip on the glasses has gone loose. She lets them go entirely. Reaching for the bottle, Shepard tops off his glass - pours herself another - and the rights the bottle with a small click of glass on metal.
Nauseatingly satisfied, she slides his glass back.]
You're forgiven.
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He doesn't, but he thinks he can try to work it out as he catches the glass and where he sipped it slow, now he matches her, he takes the drink and tips to empty it in a mouthful. Not enough and where she puts the bottle down he takes it up and it's some small measure of taking back for himself where she's shredded too vulnerable bits of him across the safest place he has. Pulling it all out and he unscrews the lid on the vodka. Flicking it away in an idle gesture and put the bottle to his lips. Stubbornly meeting her eye in it as he in measured swallows of a man drowning, drank whatever was left in it, at least until the gesture meant he couldn't, anymore.
Sterilizing an internal wound maybe, but the infection spread too long for that. But this is how you treat patients, isn't it? Get them so drunk they can't feel when the blade goes in deep, deep, deep.
Eventually, when it's empty, he puts it down, and stands after putting the two small creatures back onto the table. Hand wiping at his mouth, all rough scratch of three day old stubble and the rake back of fingers in his hair. Barely phased for however much it is, but all the same he steadies himself, shifts to go to the messiest of the bunks, where there is a suspiciously large amount of money to dig around underneath it for something.
Another bottle. Another bottle of the same clear liquid that spells out the same thing. Unscrews it too with the crack of a seal being broken as his hand covered the neck of a body, considering it as he walks back. Quick when he's fighting, but like this, worn down like this, he favors one side slightly, and his steps are slower and catching, as if it's just one more pain he's gotten used to existing with. Takes a slower sip before setting it and himself down again across from her once more.
If she ever kills him with anything less than her teeth in his throat and her nails in his chest, he'll be disappointed. ]
This comes from a place called Tyvia, where I am from. [ pauses, elbow braced on the table and his ankles hooking together under the chair. ] It's a frozen wasteland in the summer and a sunless white nightmare in the winter. [ brief look up. ] Ask your questions, if you have any then.
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So she's not going to ask questions when the bottle is emptied, when Corvo moves to stand and then across the rover. This is all just aftermath. There's still liquor in her glass when he returns with the second bottle. But if she has expectations, an invitation isn't one of them; she doesn't have a mental list of questions prepared, can't think to formulate any but one on the fly:]
You've been on Red since you dropped. So how'd you get involved in Blue's kill order mission on Ajna?
[It's blunt, breaking, shows her hand when her track record is to play close to the chest. But screw it; in a way she already has what she came here for - can feel it in how he held the bottle, in the way he settles in the chair. Why keep that she knows a secret?]
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Must be that then, and there is plenty raw around that mission, for things he'll never talk about not for orders but because he'd sworn and the one that has even less to do with his own emotions - except that was not true, was it? He had removed himself in the way that Fiona had of him. He was just a blade, it was not his position to care and the less anyone ever thought he did the better. It let him do the things for them that they could not do themselves. It might be falling on his sword except that was what he had been good at that he does not even stop to think about it. ]
Really, Commander? Why do you think? You know what they call me -- [ pause, swallow, no, she doesn't. He's just another here and no better or worse than than the rest. She has no idea what they call him. ] What my skills are listed as. Why do you think it happened? Terra was blue, at the time. You know his feelings for her, and he wanted to be again with his Shahni. [ Says the name as perfect imitation of how Jasper said it, but other than that, it's flat -- well almost, eyebrow raised, shaking his head at her briefly. It was a mess, a damn mess, but it had done what it needed, though they couldn't breath a word of it. They had spared Terra the worst of the punishment. ] You've spoken to her, you think she capable of such a thing?
[ The simplest, laid bare facts. They were themselves, not very complicated at all. He figures she'll piece the rest together from there without him saying anything. ]
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She doesn't know.
[It's not a question. Not really. Her hand and the glass in it, liquor only half gone, hovers briefly near the shape of her mouth. But it's not really something she needs answered; she doesn't know Terra well outside of pt - but seeing the girl a few times a day to run her in circles is enough that Shepard knows she's kind. Gentle, even (which isn't a word she has any real fondness for, especially here).
There's an acerbic, frank piece of her that makes her want to say 'Exactly who do you think you're helping by shielding her?' - thinks out every syllable, even. Because what good was it to pretend things were different? To be willfully ignorant? But instead she strains a sip of low, bitter alcohol through her teeth and swallows both down. Taps her forefinger one, twice against the glass.]
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He'd lost his honour, what did he care and she seems like she spat on what most would consider good manners at the best of times so he swigs ugly from the bottle like, maybe, if he didn't know better, he could get drunk still. Shakes his head like a wet dog at her. ]
She does, at least most of it. [ clears his throat when it comes out a croaking whisper from the worst of the drink and then speaks again a little more clearly. ] Some of it's gag ordered, but she walked out when Wade and I were... cleaning up.
[ Makes a gesture, absent of him looking at it, around the rover. ]
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She sets the glass down on the table between them. It's empty now, though she doesn't gesture for him to top her off with the bottle he's drinking from. She can feel the loose hum of the drink in the back of her throat, in the set of her shoulders and the idea of getting buzzed in Corvo Attano's company isn't exactly appealing. There are better people, better places to get some real drinking done.
(Which, hell, she might look in to that.)]
Good.
[How cruel is that? To approve of those circumstances? When he says 'cleaning up', he means dealing with Jasper's corpse. But it isn't like the boy's dead now, so as far as she's concerned it's settled. Any potential hurt over it doesn't exactly have grounds to exist anymore.]
And they let her get away with that? The officers?
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Suspects Terra still can too. ]
She was moved teams, if that's what you mean. Consider unfit for Blue requirements. It's not a surprise, really, and probably was for the best. [ He swallows on another mouthful of vodka, his hands itching all over again with the memory that was burned into them. Another layer of blood, as bad as hers now, for what it meant. ] The rest is... ordered. Most especially against Terra, she's never allowed to know what influence we had in what happened to her. [ She had to live with her choices, and they had to as well. ]
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But whatever it is isn't something she's going to pry out of him thanks to the gag order, so she doesn't bother asking after it. Instead she shifts back in her chair, studies him for a long moment. Drums her fingers against the metal table top. When she breaks the silence, its because she isn't interested in leaving it long enough to start filling it with questions of his own.]
Right. Well. I should go.
[And she catches the back of the chair, levering herself up and out of it without any fanfare. She got what she came for.]
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That means the world, and it's more than he deserves. He thinks Jessamine would want that, but she cannot tell him anymore. He doesn't know what she would think of him, anymore. ]
Of course. [ Habits, when a lady stands ( except no, not that process, she's a commander, he has always been a commander probably. he cannot think of her in another description of terms except the ones that beget duty and it is expected to stand when a superior officer does ), that he does too. Arms braced and he jerks his head at the bottle. ] Take it. Fair. [ He expects her to refuse, but he knows he'd be remiss if he didn't. ]
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She decides she doesn't care if there is. Or tells herself it's more game this way - if he's an opponent she's trounced up and down the deck, she can respect final wishes all the same. So after a moment Shepard leans forward, wraps her hand around the neck of the bottle and opts to accept. She hefts it, either a nonverbal assessment of value or in thanks.]
Fair.
[She nods, crisp - the kind of dismissive cut of chin and brow that's all military. And then she goes, leaving the swaddled domesticity of the rover and drawing the hatch shut behind her with a hollow clang. Simple as that.]
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His hands brace on the edge of the table, and he's still a savage angry thing, he has been for so long now he does not know how to cease to be, as he watches her. Hunched shoulders and tense muscles. Flat behind the eyes in the ways that matter right then. But then again, maybe he's embellishing on what he wished he was, it would be easier if it was. But he follows her and he follows her and none of it was enough. She's right, Anders is right and he thinks he wishes he'd never spoke to them, raised a voice to them, thought to do better because he didn't know how to do what they asked.
But it doesn't make it less his fault. No amount of self loathing and self realization left him with the faintest idea of what to do with himself. So he waits, waits as she walks away and he counts everyone of her footsteps and when she closes the door behind her, he switches to the yellow sick haze of magic instead to watch until she fades from that too.
Spirits, he hates her. ( Why did she have to be so much like -- ? )
( Why did she have to lift her head at that angle like she expected rooms to bow to her, why did she have to stare him down like that, why must she always push too hard at things he wasn't ready to give? )
( why couldn't he refuse her a single blasted thing? )
With no option to do otherwise, he takes the simplest path, the familiar path. Destruction, but Wade's not around, nothing to plunge a blade into, no where to break his bones with low hits, no one to shatter his own ribs back. She could have at least hit him. She could have at least broken his jaw. She spent so long ripping pieces of him out he wants so much to sink thumb and forefinger into the hinges of her jaw to pull it open and reach inside to pick out the bits of him left there, so sure he find it between those pretty little teeth and he sucks a breath in low.
The glasses, the bottle set on the table, the creatures skittering away from the heavy ugly smell of his magic, all burning air and river water, and he can only think so much to mind Jasper's work ( the mindless way he perfected dancing over Emily's dolls in her playroom and Jessamine's parliamentary papers as he set a glass of wine down beside her, so too he minds them ). Fragile still in a second, and the sound he wants to make should be vicious, it should be wretched but he cannot make it, just a wheezing choking breath as the magic bubbles up, and he flings a hand, the harsh burst of wind throwing the bottle and the glasses across the small room. Shatters the bottle if not the cups, brilliant brilliant shards in a loud crash and the and he sinks back down. Breathing hard for the effort if not the bitterness.
Too much until Firn comes back closer and presses in near him. Gathers his calm back in slow measures, and he gathers her up, small in his hands and presses his face against her soft fur. Another breath, another moment to recollect. Settles Firn down again and goes about moving to clean up. Carefully wipe away every detail until there was time to work out what to do. ]