[ Amber half regrets the offer already, because there's no logical benefit to speaking about Hei. It won't bring him back.
Even so, any reason to distract her from her thoughts is better than none when her well-being is concerned. So here she is, seated on the floor by the largest windows with weary eyes planted on the stars. She's quiet, muted somehow, but forty minutes was enough time to make herself seem presentable, albeit with hair looped in a bun to hide its poor state. It doesn't matter anyway. ]
[Forty minutes is exactly enough time for Shepard to wrap up most of her other black glass conversations - stretched in five different directions at all times is the norm - and to make her way to observation. She refreshes herself on Amber's dossier during the walk over, tabbing quickly through her own copies of the personnel files. She reads with her head down, moves at a clip. There isn't much there. It doesn't take her long.
It does mean recognizing the woman from across the deck is easy enough - hard to miss that hair. Tabbing away from the files, Shepard moves at a clip to close the distance. There's something square and unmistakeably no-nonsense about her own appearance, rigid by practice on approach. But the moment she's beside Amber, she's already folding her legs to sit down beside her rather than expecting the other woman to stand to meet her.
[ She knows what her own file says of her and cares nothing about refuting or supporting the accusations leveled against her. She isn't here to save the world she left behind. If destroying her home world would save a single person (no, two-- two people), she would do it in a heartbeat. There was an offer made for her to consider. When she's ready. But she doesn't trust any decisions she makes at the moment.
Shepard arrives before Amber notices her in the room, likely a testament to her muddled head, so there's a brief pause as she turns to the woman then looks at the offered hand. Ah-- yes, a handshake. ]
Amber. [ Formerly of the Evening Primrose and formerly of the Syndicate and formerly of the British Secret Intelligence Services but none of that matters. ]
Aren't you too busy for nostalgic musings about someone who aren't even part of the crew anymore?
[After a moment, she drops her hand. No harm, no foul - likely not the first handshake offer she's had fall flat. It's a big universe out there and ninety-nine percent of it doesn't know the gesture.]
Day standard is twenty hours where I'm from. Seventy-two leaves me a lot of time to kill.
[A simple answer, none of it a lie. She is busy - between organizing this, keeping her head above water with the CDC and getting her and Aeryn's cadets back on track in the wake of the ship's instability, there's enough on her plate that she'd probably do better with a serving platter. But she has time for this; it might have been a different story a few days ago, but the loss of an hour now likely won't end in anyone dead.]
[ If it's any consolation, her move --or lack of one-- is less due to any intention to slight Shepard and more because she fails to see the point in shaking hands. Or making acquaintances. Or doing anything that doesn't directly relate to her continued survival. Like old times. She's posturing, really, hoping that acting like she doesn't care would help her stop caring. Stop hurting too.
Is this a way of killing time? The question lingers at the tip of her tongue but she remembers that being adversarial to one's own crew member does no favors for anyone. ]
Before I start, why are you here? Curiosity or pity?
[ Amber doesn't seem angry. Rather, apathetic. Face impassive. It's an act that's only too easy to fall back into. ]
[Simple enough. True enough. She has time for this, but not for feeling bad for people who don't need or want it. It's not strict curiosity - she knows there's some catharsis or whatever to be found in talking about this kind of thing, isn't there? But there's selfishness there too: if no one else cared, if the Instructors or the CDC or whoever wasn't going to put any effort to the people who died for or on account of them, at least she could.]
I'm not here to pry anything out of you that you don't want to give me.
[ That's an unexpected answer and it almost shows from the way Amber turns and watches her, trying to ascertain how truthful it is. There's something refreshing in how straightforward Shepard is; no empty niceties, no promises that things will be okay again because she knows it won't. ]
He followed his sister into war so he could protect her. He was... Fifteen? Sixteen? I never asked. What do you think it takes to, not die but, kill again and again and again for the sake of another? He never wanted to. Why did he do it?
[It reminds her strangely of Benjamin and her brother - that fierceness in the younger woman when she talks about him. It's not something Shepard says and it doesn't linger long: a thought there and gone as she sets her jaw and studies Amber.
None of those are questions she knows how to answer; she's never had family, left the only vague shape of one she'd had in the dust on Earth when she'd enlisted. They're probably hypothetical questions anyway.]
Is that where you met him? When he was off protecting his sister?
[ From another person, the questions would most likely be hypothetical. But from Amber it's not. To this day, she knows she falls so far short of understanding it. She doubts even Hei could explain it even if he wanted to. It's something that even she knows can't be put to words.
She's visibly tense and confused with no small measure of anger, though she won't be able to put it so surely. All she knows is that she's feeling much too much of everything. ]
Yes. He was weak. I thought he would die soon enough and I'd be rid of a liability. [ She turns back to Shepard. ] Tell me, what does regret feel like?
[There's something about the look in the other woman's face that catches her up, the frankness of the question. Shepard fixes her with a flat look in return, her hands still across her folded legs. The CDC uniform fabric is smoother than the stuff the Alliance's gear is made out of - no grit or weave to the fabric that she can pick at with her habitually short fingernails.
What does regret feel like? Feels like Kaidan Alenko in a bar on Selena-VII, she thinks. But maybe that's guilt. Untangling the two always feels like too much of a problem to deal with; better to just forget both of them.]
Hell if I know. [Said with enough sincerity that she hopes - hopes - that it doesn't sound like she's blowing the question off.] I don't think it feels like anything. It just makes everything else seem like a bigger issue.
[ Guilt is even more alien to her. That implies any sense of right or wrong. All she knows is that sometimes things happen in the past that you wish you could change. The only difference is that she has always been able to fix whatever she wanted to, be it in the past or the future, where others can only choose in the present.
Amber is inexperienced in regret. ]
How do you turn it into a smaller issue then?
[ Her own tone isn't confrontational. It's flat, even. Near emotionless. It's easier to fall back on this, to regress, than to make sense of it all. ]
[Good question, she thinks. If she knew the answer, she might not be here - still standing on the deck of the Normandy, Thessia burning systems away behind her and Cerberus somewhere ahead. But that isn't a possibility she likes to think about, doesn't like to consider the fact that she'd been impatient and too eager to make up for a misstep and now here she was: between a rock and a hard place of her own making.
Shepard exhales, sharp.]
Look, I'm not the best person to talk to about this. [Let's admit that right off the bat.] But in my experience? You don't. You just keep going and it happens on its own.
[ Shepard may not be the best, but she's human. That's more than can be said about herself. She was hoping that would be enough. At times like these when she barely manages to keep herself together, she returns to the tried and true method of understanding each piece like a puzzle to be solved. Contractor-like. If she can understand it rationally, then maybe-- ]
You could tell me it gets better with time. [ She turns back to the other woman, expectant. ] Does it?
It goes away. [Or gets easier to ignore. She's a professional when it comes to compartmentalization; the difference between the two doesn't really matter to her.] As long as you're moving forward, you'll leave the hard parts behind you.
[Saying it like that makes it sound like bullshit to her own ears, but she doesn't really know how to put it differently. Forward momentum has been her go-to strategy for as long as she can remember - kept her alive on Earth and kept her alive in the Alliance and is keeping her alive, technically, now.
Can't beat a strategy with that kind of track record.]
[ In hindsight, she doesn't even know why she asked that of Shepard when she so readily rejects the option. Maybe the denial goes away with time too. Maybe. Though she can't imagine it from where she stands at the moment.
Amber clenches her fists, releases, then heaves a slow sigh. ]
You should know I haven't stopped trying to save him.
[ That is, she won't. Death isn't all powerful. She has defied it for his sake one too many times for this instance to be the one she fails in. ]
[If Amber's expecting Shepard to talk her down, she won't get it. Instead, she gives her a frank look - cut and dry when she says:] Good. If you think there's a way, there's no reason to. But regret shouldn't have anything to do with it. If there's a problem, fix it.
[Death wasn't an insurmountable thing - not here, not even back where she'd come from; that fact that she was here, sitting on the chill deck of the CDC's observation deck, was proof enough of that. As backwards as it might sound given the whole 'move forward' mantra, she wasn't here to tell anyone to stop trying.
--Just to stop torturing themselves over the want to.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Shepard
[The rest-- demands a certain kind of delicacy that isn't really her forte. Still, giving it her best shot:]
FROM: shepard.lydia@cdc.org
So not memorializing him then. Something to respect his time here?
no subject
I never met him while he was onboard.
[ If she could say that in the most curt way, she would. But later, almost an hour later: ]
FROM: amber@cdc.org
He is fond of stars.
casually retcons that above date to the 84th for the record
Noted. Thank you
consider it done!
How do you know him?
[ No past tense. ]
no subject
Only by reputation and the personnel files
[And barely that.]
no subject
Would you like to know?
no subject
If you've got the time
no subject
All the time in the world
FROM: amber@cdc.org
When you have a free moment
no subject
Give me 40 minutes. I can meet you in observation
no subject
OK
[ Amber half regrets the offer already, because there's no logical benefit to speaking about Hei. It won't bring him back.
Even so, any reason to distract her from her thoughts is better than none when her well-being is concerned. So here she is, seated on the floor by the largest windows with weary eyes planted on the stars. She's quiet, muted somehow, but forty minutes was enough time to make herself seem presentable, albeit with hair looped in a bun to hide its poor state. It doesn't matter anyway. ]
no subject
It does mean recognizing the woman from across the deck is easy enough - hard to miss that hair. Tabbing away from the files, Shepard moves at a clip to close the distance. There's something square and unmistakeably no-nonsense about her own appearance, rigid by practice on approach. But the moment she's beside Amber, she's already folding her legs to sit down beside her rather than expecting the other woman to stand to meet her.
Simple courtesies.
She offers her hand.]
Shepard, formerly of the SSV Normandy.
no subject
Shepard arrives before Amber notices her in the room, likely a testament to her muddled head, so there's a brief pause as she turns to the woman then looks at the offered hand. Ah-- yes, a handshake. ]
Amber. [ Formerly of the Evening Primrose and formerly of the Syndicate and formerly of the British Secret Intelligence Services but none of that matters. ]
Aren't you too busy for nostalgic musings about someone who aren't even part of the crew anymore?
no subject
Day standard is twenty hours where I'm from. Seventy-two leaves me a lot of time to kill.
[A simple answer, none of it a lie. She is busy - between organizing this, keeping her head above water with the CDC and getting her and Aeryn's cadets back on track in the wake of the ship's instability, there's enough on her plate that she'd probably do better with a serving platter. But she has time for this; it might have been a different story a few days ago, but the loss of an hour now likely won't end in anyone dead.]
no subject
Is this a way of killing time? The question lingers at the tip of her tongue but she remembers that being adversarial to one's own crew member does no favors for anyone. ]
Before I start, why are you here? Curiosity or pity?
[ Amber doesn't seem angry. Rather, apathetic. Face impassive. It's an act that's only too easy to fall back into. ]
no subject
[Simple enough. True enough. She has time for this, but not for feeling bad for people who don't need or want it. It's not strict curiosity - she knows there's some catharsis or whatever to be found in talking about this kind of thing, isn't there? But there's selfishness there too: if no one else cared, if the Instructors or the CDC or whoever wasn't going to put any effort to the people who died for or on account of them, at least she could.]
I'm not here to pry anything out of you that you don't want to give me.
no subject
He followed his sister into war so he could protect her. He was... Fifteen? Sixteen? I never asked. What do you think it takes to, not die but, kill again and again and again for the sake of another? He never wanted to. Why did he do it?
no subject
None of those are questions she knows how to answer; she's never had family, left the only vague shape of one she'd had in the dust on Earth when she'd enlisted. They're probably hypothetical questions anyway.]
Is that where you met him? When he was off protecting his sister?
no subject
She's visibly tense and confused with no small measure of anger, though she won't be able to put it so surely. All she knows is that she's feeling much too much of everything. ]
Yes. He was weak. I thought he would die soon enough and I'd be rid of a liability. [ She turns back to Shepard. ] Tell me, what does regret feel like?
no subject
What does regret feel like? Feels like Kaidan Alenko in a bar on Selena-VII, she thinks. But maybe that's guilt. Untangling the two always feels like too much of a problem to deal with; better to just forget both of them.]
Hell if I know. [Said with enough sincerity that she hopes - hopes - that it doesn't sound like she's blowing the question off.] I don't think it feels like anything. It just makes everything else seem like a bigger issue.
no subject
Amber is inexperienced in regret. ]
How do you turn it into a smaller issue then?
[ Her own tone isn't confrontational. It's flat, even. Near emotionless. It's easier to fall back on this, to regress, than to make sense of it all. ]
no subject
Shepard exhales, sharp.]
Look, I'm not the best person to talk to about this. [Let's admit that right off the bat.] But in my experience? You don't. You just keep going and it happens on its own.
no subject
You could tell me it gets better with time. [ She turns back to the other woman, expectant. ] Does it?
no subject
[Saying it like that makes it sound like bullshit to her own ears, but she doesn't really know how to put it differently. Forward momentum has been her go-to strategy for as long as she can remember - kept her alive on Earth and kept her alive in the Alliance and is keeping her alive, technically, now.
Can't beat a strategy with that kind of track record.]
no subject
Amber clenches her fists, releases, then heaves a slow sigh. ]
You should know I haven't stopped trying to save him.
[ That is, she won't. Death isn't all powerful. She has defied it for his sake one too many times for this instance to be the one she fails in. ]
You will see.
no subject
[Death wasn't an insurmountable thing - not here, not even back where she'd come from; that fact that she was here, sitting on the chill deck of the CDC's observation deck, was proof enough of that. As backwards as it might sound given the whole 'move forward' mantra, she wasn't here to tell anyone to stop trying.
--Just to stop torturing themselves over the want to.]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)