outsiderslogs

Entry tags:

OPEN;

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's been something of a rough week for him, too.

He'd spent a few days in Mordin's clinic, burned and bandaged as he had been, and though York had only been a short distance away from him, he hadn't been able to see her. Hadn't been able to talk to her.

And that just makes the guilt sitting in the pit of his stomach worsen. Makes every muscle draw tight so much to the point that when his jaw clenches against it, he thinks his teeth might be in danger of shattering.

He debates for a long while on whether or not it would be appropriate to go see her. He knows she has to be feeling horrible, not only because their mission had gone as it had, but of what it had done to her. The York that he and Carolina know, the one from their universe had dealt with an eye injury of his own, and though North knows that this York had had hers repaired wherever she had been before, the fact that she'd had it happen again ..

It makes his heart clench, makes his chest tighten and his throat dry up, and even though he's standing right outside the door to the apartment she shares with Wash, he's finding that he's hesitating.

Because he doesn't know what to say.

Because he feels like this is somehow his fault.

And he's never had to deal with this sort of guilt before.

He doesn't even realize he's holding his breath until he lets it out and finally knocks on the door.

York had spent a day or so laid up after she'd come home from the clinic, but that was about all she could stand. She's never been one for lying around for too long, especially when she can't stand the sight of her own reflection. Wash is out for a while, much to her relief, and she's spending some time picking up around the apartment, just trying to keep her hands busy.

When she hears the knock on the door she sets down the dirty dishes she'd been gathering up and goes to answer it. She doesn't expect North, though maybe she should have -- she knew he and Garrus were all right, thanks to Mordin, that they'd suffered only minor injuries on their part. She'd been the one to get away unlucky. She should have figured he'd come by sooner or later, and honestly, she feels as though she should've dropped him a line earlier, if only to let him know she's okay. Then again, maybe she just couldn't commit to those words.

She manages a dim smile when she opens the door, and when she does it pulls at the skin around her eye, even underneath the gauze. It's hard not to see. "Hey."

He's been meaning to come see her sooner than he's actually found himself outside her apartment. He hadn't been sure if she wanted to be alone, if she'd wanted to spend her time healing with Wash - because even though he hadn't spoken to either of them on the matter, he could tell there was something between them.

And that was their business, and no one else's. But he hadn't wanted to potentially intrude on anything.

He's been going over and over what he's going to say to her once she opens the door - ranging from I'm sorry to I should have protected you better to thinking that he shouldn't say anything at all. And once that door is open, once his gaze finds the gauze covering her left eye, his breath catches. Anything he might have said goes right out the window, and his fingers curl in on themselves just the slightest bit at his sides.

"Hey .. how are you feeling?"

It'd be so easy for York make a glib comment, something cool and distant so she doesn't have to feel it, but even now, she's conscious of the way North is looking at her. She doesn't know exactly what yet, but he feels something about what happened, and just based on what she knows about him, she has a good guess. She doesn't need to make him feel any worse.

"Not my top day of the year, but I've had worse," she says with a one-shoulder shrug, as noncommittally as possible. She doesn't want North to feel guilty, but it wouldn't do him any good to fake it, either. Not that she's sure she could, right now. She steps back out of the doorway, nodding her head. "Hey, come in. You look kinda like you've been through the wringer, too."

FIRST. FIIIIRST.

gives u a medal

yiiissss.

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and sunday comes afterwards

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:(

:'(

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

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