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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With the exception of her boss, nobody had really dared to make any comments to York's face about...well, her face. She's keeping it bandaged per the doctor's orders, and she's been working at The Quad long enough to have garnered some respect from the usuals -- she'd have to, being the only human bartender and lasting this long. And Davrax making a remark about how the krogan appreciate a woman with a good facial scar -- well, it'd been crude, but York suspects he'd just been trying to make her feel better, in his own gruff way. She'd shrugged it off like everything else.

She stops abruptly when she nearly runs into Dun on her way out the door, eyebrows raising slightly. "Uh, you waitin' for somebody?"

"I was waiting for you."

Well, here comes the conundrum. How do you treat a female comrade-in-arms without breaking social boundaries? He wants to express that he's going to support her if she needs him, but at the same time he doesn't want her to get the wrong idea, especially because he's married and he's noticed that polygamy is frowned on here.

So after a few seconds of false starts for conversation, he just presents the package to her.

"I heard. So I made you some proper nourishment. It's better than the rubbish that people call food here; it'll help you get your strength back."

His voice is assertive but subdued, gruff and loud yet reserved and polite, a mixture of all the feelings and struggles he's having when he went over to see her. But most importantly, he just means her well, so he pushes the pot of rice porridge that he made into her hands. There's some shredded meat there that looks like chicken, and even some vegetables. Heck, there's even ginger inside. Don't ask how he managed to find those rare ingredients; he had a lot of threatening and demanding to do at the market place.

York's figured out by now that Dun's got an issue with interacting with women. It's not like it's not glaringly obvious, anyway. She figures it's whatever world he came from, or whatever time. His apology last time had been pretty genuine. The poor guy just doesn't have any idea how to talk to a woman.

If it were any other day, if she weren't just days away from nearly having half her face blasted off, she'd be a little more enthusiastic, a little more engaging. But she's oddly sedate when she takes the pot and peeks inside, a look of mild but mystified surprise on her face.

"Oh, uh -- thanks. That's...really thoughtful of you." York's not really sure how to respond to all these platitudes, even when they're genuine. But a look of concern crosses her face, her brow knitting. She hasn't exactly made her injury public knowledge, and the list of people North and Wash would contact is pretty short. "Where exactly did you hear?"

Dun shrugged; the exact unflattering comparisons between him and York aren't the best conversation material. "I heard that the female human barkeeper at the Quad had acquired a serious injury," he explained, taking care to keep Mordin's name out of it. And it was technically true; it was a conversation he had overheard on the street that had first tipped him off.

"I don't put a lot of stock into rumours and hear-say, but your employer told me that you would be missing from work for a few days so it was not difficult to make the connection."

He coughs; he hates half-truths but there is no way he can let York know that he had been considering dropping by her home to visit her either and that he had enquired about her at the bar for her address.

A moment passes, and then another, before he asks her in a low voice "What do you want to do, York?" Do you want vengeance, he asks silently. Because Dun's blade is sharp and ready. Or do you want to rest? Do you wish for solitude? Or companionship?

What can he do to help you feel better?

York looks at him quietly, her face a good deal more somber, more subdued than usual. She purses her lips, as if trying not to frown. "What do I wanna do?" she repeats, her shoulders slackening just slightly. "What I wanna do is get my life halfway back to normal, Dun. Shit happens. Definitely wouldn't be the first time."

There's a bitter sting on her tongue with those words, because it's a little more true than Dun knows. The fact that she's managed to fuck up this eye not once, but twice, and in eerily the same manner -- and after she had it fixed, for shit's sake -- it makes her uneasy on a level she's never experienced it before. Something about all this smacks of some kind of unavoidable fate, to her.

He suspects the bitterness but opts to say nothing because sometimes words aren't enough, condolences don't cut it and sympathy sounds too much like pity for it to actually help. What he should be doing is, well, something. Something tangible and meaningful and sincere which actually pulls people back on their feet.

Dun's given plenty of pep talks to injured soldiers, but rarely on a one-on-one basis. It somehow makes things more personal, and it can't get any more personal than the injury being an eye one, of all possible wounds to get. Somewhere in his previous life he must've done something horribly wrong; only karma can explain how he's been placed in this situation again, except that now he's the one speaking to the injured instead of being the one who lost their eye. This whole situation is twisted.

It takes time for wounds to heal; sometimes people just want their space. That's the least he can give her; it seems little, and that infuriates him because he should be doing more, but that might be what she's looking for.

"I'll...leave you to it then. You know how to contact me if needed.

Just don't call to complain about the porridge. Cooking was never a skill I was particularly good at."

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