outsiderslogs

who. York and YOU!
what. for anyone who wants to talk to, see, or run into York since her injury
where. anywhere in Zeta District -- The Quad, York and Wash's apartment, somewhere in the markets, etc
when. anytime this week!
warnings. probably lots of feelings :(

It hasn't been a good week for York. It's the understatement of the century, really. The mission on Saturday with Garrus and North had gone so fantastically awful, she's still reeling from it a little. It's too fresh in her mind, still, even the admittedly blurry memory of the incendiary grenade going off in her face. Garrus and North had had to drag her out of there to the clinic, and she'd lost a good day to emergency surgery and recovery. And in the end, they'd botched the job. Nobody had even gotten paid.

Mordin had done his best, and honestly, considering the limited resources, he did a pretty damn good job. Especilaly for an alien. She wouldn't have figured a salarian could fix up a human face this nice. No, nice isn't the word for it. It doesn't look even close to nice. The wound is healing, but it's still fresh, an ugly red swath of skin around her left eye, pulling down her cheek. Even when it's bandaged, it's impossible to hide the way the damaged skin pulls unnaturally tight around her eye. And she can't hide the eye itself. Even once the skin heals -- if it even heals all the way -- her eye will still be that awful, milky white. She'll be lucky to get it back to fifty percent functionality, at this point. Last time this'd happened, she'd had UNSC medical facilities available to her; better equipment, more staff, more resources. Last time.

York's starting to feel like the butt of some cosmic joke.

It's bad enough to have a job go so fantastically wrong like this one did, to have her ass land in the hospital with such a severe injury. To have it become something permanently debilitating, to have to wear it like she does. It's bad enough that it hurts. But it's even worse that this has happened before.

The similarities are too eerie, so much they make her feel a little sick. She'd gotten the eye fixed back on Sacrosanct because she didn't want to be a liability. She wanted to be able to watch her own back, and without Delta, she couldn't do that, not with a busted eye. And now she's right back where she started -- worse, even -- and this time, she doesn't even have somebody else's Delta to understand. Maybe six months with a new eye and she'd gotten used to it. She'd gotten used to looking in the mirror and seeing the perfect symmetry of her face, to smoothing her hand over her left cheek and feeling only smooth, soft skin. She'd just gotten used to the delightful ease with which she could read and focus and see, with no headaches, no strain. She'd only just gotten comfortable with it. And what -- that's it? That's all she gets? Well, joke's on her for ever thinking things might be easy, for once.

But there's nothing York can do. She doesn't have Delta to help her compensate and Mordin's got the best care she can receive on the station on her paycheck. So York does what she does best -- she keeps moving forward, making like nothing's happened, because what's she gonna say, anyway? She goes back to work at The Quad as soon as she's able, because she can only stand to be laid up for so long and it's just her face, it's not like she can't walk, and her boss comments on her face in a way that's maybe supposed to be funny, but maybe she doesn't get krogan humor. She keeps going about her business, just like before, and she doesn't look in mirrors much anymore these days, but at least she's still moving.

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He hears about it. She goes back to work, people go to bars, people comment. Arthur does patrols and hears some Krogan talk about the 'battle scar' the bartender at the Quad, and feels his stomach turn.

Christ. What qualifies as a battle scar to Krogan?

So he waits until it's too early for the Quad to be full and goes to visit, finds York - and she's got her good side to him, so for a moment he doesn't see, until she turns to do something - ah, shit, bandages.

He'd gotten used to York with her good eye. It takes a moment to conjure up the memory of her before, but it's clear, it's the same side. Like some sort of horrible irony. Arthur feels for her.

He approaches the bar, figures the best way to start is normal.

"Whiskey, neat." Well, almost normal. This is no time for his regular drink.

Honestly, York's thankful for normal. She can't stand thinking too hard about what happened, especially not when she can see it on Wash's face every time he looks at her. Christ, it's been a long couple of days.

York hesitates for a moment, almost stiffening when she sees Arthur, but he's cool, he's casual, and she's grateful for it. She relaxes, nodding only slightly, and even manages a tired smile. It pulls at the skin around her eyes, tight and shiny from where it peeks out from underneath the bandage. "You got it, chief," York says, reaching for a glass and a bottle of whiskey -- some of the better stuff at least. She doesn't look too hard at his face as she pours him his drink and slides it across the table to him.

His eyes are drawn to the injury a little while she moves after she smiles - it looks worse than what she had before, but he wasn't there for that healing process.

He could ask Wash, but it seems wrong. Wash is probably worried enough about it.

Regardless, he doesn't make it obvious, not that she's looking at him enough to notice if he was. He takes the drink when she slides it to him, curling his hand around it. He debates asking about the injury, but for the moment...

"Looks like there's a clean up squad going around Zeta. You heard about it?"

"What, you mean Dun's little charity party? Yeah, I heard about it."

Somehow adamantly not talking about it and having someone actually go along with it isn't as comforting as she'd thought. It makes her a little uneasy, somehow, but she has to hand it to Arthur. The guy can really keep his cool -- he's barely even flinched -- and she appreciates that. She mops up a small spill with a rag, raising her eyebrows.

"You gonna pitch in?"

Honestly, Arthur's seen worse - he's seen guys with their legs blown off, he's seen stranger and sicker things in people's minds, what their projections can do, beating someone to a pulp -

But most of that has been in dreams. Something ethereal that won't last. This permanence is one he's not used to entirely. At least he's got the practice not flinching.

He takes a sip of his whiskey, appreciating the mild burn as it goes down.

"Might. At least with anything near my apartment." He gives a rueful grin. "My room mate is missing, so it's just me again. Real bachelor pad."

After she'd gotten the eye fixed, after a while, it had started to feel like a dream. The old injury faded into memory like she'd never thought it would, like the UNSC doctors told her it never would, but after a month or two, it'd gotten hard to remember what it was like, being half-blind. And she'd been happy to forget about it.

But now, she remembers all too well. It's all coming back to her, and she knows what to expect. She's not sure if that's really a good thing.

She clears her throat a little, quietly. "Yeah? Hey, what happened to your roommate? They just...disappear?" Back on Sacrosanct, that'd been unfortunately common. But this place is obviously different from Sacrosanct -- no teleporters, and sure as hell no respawning. She's never been quite sure if people could disappear from this place they way they did on Sacrosanct.

It's easy to not mention her eye just yet, to just let his gaze pass over the injury. It's still York and he's not sure how much this is helping her, but he can play along.

"Just disappeared," Arthur says after a moment, turning his glass around once. "She went out and didn't show back up. Don't know if she got on the wrong side of a Vorcha or..." he shrugs a shoulder to indicate the teleporters that sometimes never let someone escape.

York sucks at her teeth in disappointment, letting out a breath. She already knows they can die here. She doesn't like the that they could disappear, too. "Man, I'm sorry," she sighs, directing her gaze anywhere but Arthur's face. Honestly, she's afraid if she looks, she'll find pity on his face. "That's -- Christ. Never a dull moment, though, huh?"

The ever-present threat of just one day not showing back up - Arthur doesn't like it, not one bit. Even if he hadn't known Maeby that well.

"It's all right. Hopefully she's fine, wherever she is," he says, trying to keep a light tone to his voice. He does chuckle when York speaks, though his gaze glances to her eye. Never a dull moment indeed.

"It seems like if one thing isn't going on something else is happening," he agrees finally. And then, quieter.

"York, what happened?"

Man, and they'd gone several whole minutes without talking about it. So much for that. York gives him a pained look, like she's about to beg him not to talk about it. She thought if anybody wouldn't bring it up, it'd be Arthur. Well, she's not having such great luck this week.

"Bad job," she says briefly, almost gruffly, looking away to scrub at the bar or stare at the wall behind Arthur or anywhere else. "Bad intel. Could've been worse, though."

Yeah, it could've been. She could've had her entire fucking head blown off by an unlucky grenade. But somehow, telling herself that doesn't really seem to make it any better.

A head wound? Always has a chance to 'could have been worse', but it's still bad enough. He remembers her scars before she'd fixed them. It's got to be worse for her.

"It looks like it was rough enough," he says. He knows she doesn't want to talk about it - he can see that, but he has to say something. He'll leave it alone soon enough - he'll have to, when she inevitably gets angry. If he pushes that far.

Arthur'd have to push pretty far to make York angry, even now. He's usually too cool, too reasonable to snap at for more than a second. And it's not like she doesn't know he cares about her. She has to hand it to him for managing to avoid talking about it the longest of anyone, at least.

"Nothin' I can't handle," she says, maybe a little more roughly than necessary. After a moment, she lets out a short, hoarse laugh, more of a bark. "Nothin' I haven't handled before, anyway. At least this time I know what to expect."

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:'(

i was trying to find an emote that's york now but alas

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