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[2leftfeet]

CHARACTERS: Shepard & YOU
LOCATION: Deck 023, Various
WARNINGS: N/A (will edit if applicable)
SUMMARY: Going over data from the recon mission + miscellaneous catch all for end of May
NOTES: I'm game for more specific/individual starters or feel free to start one yourself. Prose or brackets!


i. Deck 023
[She gives herself very little in the way of down time between returning to the inhabitable areas of the ship and doing a headcount, collecting verbal reports and the data sent from the recon mission's fireteams to their respective comm liaisons. The result is a lot of data: text and audio files, a few scraps of video and days and days and days worth of mapping information from the devices that each fireteam had carried. Even with the gaps in communication, the resulting mountain of data is too massive for any one person to comb through and sort intelligently.

Doesn't mean she won't give it a shot. Shepard has set herself up in one of the large public rooms on Deck 023, meaning to take advantage of the large holoscreens there to go through the video data. It's all a little Shadow Broker: two screens running video, a third compiling the mapping data into a semi-useable schematic, and Shepard herself looking thrashed out and bright-eyed from lack of sleep bent over her own communications device, taking reference notes as she slowly limps her way through the datastreams. It's less than ten days worth of footage, much of it video and audio from points of aimless wandering down intersecting corridors and it's still an intimidatingly daunting task; she doesn't know how anyone could process a whole galaxy worth of information.

Eventually she leans back in her chair, pausing to rub her eyes.]

Hell.

ii. Kitchens
[Coffee. It's a nigh primordial need that she finds herself looking to satisfy at --what? Some ungodly hour, maybe. Or it could be the middle of the day and she hasn't noticed. It's been a long few hours and every time she sits in the quiet for too long, she starts to hear (or remember) the low droning tapping from inside the belly of the ship.

So she stays busy and right now that means standing in one of the Tranquility's many kitchens, listening the the hiss of the coffee maker as a pot brews. To anyone who might come across her there, she looks bone tired. A little sharp, a little lean. She's spent too many hours staring at datafeeds, eyes burning; Shepard looks just about as good as she feels which if she stopped to examine herself would probably be 'shitty'.]

Comments

[2leftfeet]

Sounds like double KIA to me. [She's seen just enough vids to know this is the kind of talk that gets well meaning soldiers killed.

But she's chancing a grin about it anyway - brief and sudden over her coffee mug in the beat before she takes another sip of the bitter drink. What the hell, right? Tempt fate.]

[vindictam]

[ he grins back, outsider forbid he knows how, and it's unpleasant, the scars on his face pulling with it. ]

Just promise me, I'll go first. [ he might be joking, and for the most part there is mirth. But something else, that lingers. That he can't follow one more woman, just to have her slip from him, no matter who she is. ]

[2leftfeet]

Oh, I can give you that. [All confidence, legitimately snorting into her cup.] I don't know if anyone's told you this yet, but dying and me don't really get along. I'm pretty good at kicking its ass.

[Been there, done that.]

[vindictam]

[ You would think, for a man with his life, he'd be better at his face straight, calm and with as little to be seen upon it as was possible. But so help him, he looks painfully relieved to hear that. ]

No I haven't. [ which is nothing to do with the fact he spends 80% of his time setting in high places not talking to anyone if he could help it. he's not brooding he swears. ] But it never does for a Commander to die before her men, it makes the rest of us look bad.

[2leftfeet]

Damn right. [Maybe it's the crappy coffee, the lack of sleep, the shit talk levels reaching critical-- but for a second there's a real surge of pleasure in all of it and she can't school the grin from off her face (and for a second doesn't really want to).]

Besides, no one would run this show if I wasn't here and where would that leave you all? I'd hate to ditch everyone in a rotted out ship waiting to go full black hole on you.

[vindictam]

[ it's all of it, horrifically familiar, and he can't remember being so much at ease for such a long time. Not quite calm, but sure, at least a little, that so long as he was her weapon, whatever that may be, he wouldn't have to fight out alone. ]

Naturally. We'd be utterly lost. Fall into utter disrepair.

[ stop the press, they have a sense of humor. ]

[2leftfeet]

[She's all teeth, crooked grin widening against the edge of her mug as she desperately tries to distract from it by sucking down gulps of too hot coffee. But she can't help herself either:]

You better take a picture when Tyke cries at my funeral.

[vindictam]

[ he snorted into his cup, taking another drink. ]

If I have my way, I'll be in the ground beside you.

[2leftfeet]

Oh hell, Corvo, don't be so dramatic. If you and I are both [--and she emphasizes her point with literal air quotes, albeit only on one hand as her other is busy with the coffee mug--] "in the ground" who's going to make sure this recon thing keeps going?

If the ship eats me, it better not take down this mission with me.

[Which-- is funny. This whole conversation is stupid and ridiculous and all bravado, but the thought makes her pause slightly. Catches the corner of her mouth. If she goes out, she's pretty sure this ends with her.

Better not let it happen then.]

[vindictam]

[ he just gave her a look then. ]

You expect me to continue this if you get taken by the void? [ are you sick, Shepard, are you feeling okay, are you sure you should be leading them right now.

But at her slightly pinched look, he cleared his throat, pretending he hadn't seen it otherwise. ]

Someone will step forward.

[2leftfeet]

Hell no. [And that's emphatic enough to be sincere.] I just want to be content in the knowledge that you'll be glaring and ominous at everyone until someone does.

[But not they're getting into territory she's not sure she likes. 'Wills' not 'ifs'. Shepard knocks back most of her cup and promptly pours herself another. It's a use for her hands, busy work.

Most of what she does could probably be called that.]

[vindictam]

Good, I thought to send you to a physician otherwise. [ color him relieved.

he gives her a perfectly blank stare that is as close as he could possibly be to innocent. ]

I'm hardly ominous.

[2leftfeet]

[FLAT LOOK. RAISED EYEBROW.]

You're kind of ominous.

[vindictam]

[ CASUALLY SIPPING HIS COFFEE. TOTALLY INNOCENT. ]

I'm attentive.

[2leftfeet]

Sure. Is that what you tell people when they find your rat scuttling around in their ventilation shafts?

[Tomato, tomahto.]

[vindictam]

[ he grumbles a little and -- ] I should hope I'm not that obvious.

[ STANDING IN DARK CORNERS. WITH HIS SKULL MASK. NOT MOVING OR SPEAKING FOR HOURS. WHAT DO YOU MEAN OMINOUS. ]

[2leftfeet]

[Shepard simply makes a low, clearly skeptical noise against the edge of her coffee mug before taking a patient sip of the scalding coffee. Sure dude, whatever you say.]

[vindictam]

[ he huffs. Call his professional pride wounded. ]

I should have expected as much from someone who spends as much time cleaning her guns to be as vigilant.

[2leftfeet]

[It's an easy guess, but she gets the feeling that he's not going off conjecture -- and that makes the curve of her mouth turn slightly downward, eyes narrowing by a degree or two. Corvo please.]

Have you been spying on me, Attano?

[vindictam]

[ He never worked off conjecture if he didn't have to. Or at least he hadn't. He cared very little anymore to the details. ]

Nothing of the sort. [ there's a slightly uncomfortable shift. ] Just have to... make sure. [ a lifetime of being paranoid so the people he loved didn't have to be. ]

[2leftfeet]

[Which prompts a very low humming noise pressed into the edge of her coffee mug. So that's a yes, is officially what she's hearing.]

Keep it to the common areas. [No heat there. Look, this isn't her first time around the block and definitely not her first time having someone keeping an eye on her without her noticing; she's pretty sure Kasumi knew the Normandy's crawl spaces better than the people that built the ship.]

[vindictam]

[ He let out the breath he hadn't noticed he'd held. It wasn't meant to be any invasive than passing observation. Old habits, and they kept him sane in some ways. ]

I have no wish to see otherwise. It was bad enough to do it too one woman her whole life never mind... [ and he leaves it there. Taking a sip of his coffee again. ] This is very good, this drink. I haven't had it in a long time.