neverknocks: (24)
Agent York / Natalie van der Haast ([personal profile] neverknocks) wrote in [community profile] outsiderslogs2013-04-23 09:25 pm

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.
noscope: (→ BY A BITTER FATE)

convenient hair placement

[personal profile] noscope 2013-05-17 08:03 am (UTC)(link)
She may as well be his York, for all the good it does in having him try to think of her differently. It doesn't matter that she's a different gender, that she's definitely had different things happen to her than his York has; in the few short months he's come to know her, he can't help but to feel close to her.

To feel responsible for her.

He finally raises his eyes to look at her again, and the sight of the gauze covering her eyes makes him want to wince, but he somehow manages to keep it to himself. "Yeah, I know. But I had a feeling. And I never ignore those. I should have listened to it. I'm .. sorry I didn't."
noscope: (→ YOU AND I WILL STAND)

[personal profile] noscope 2013-05-29 07:27 pm (UTC)(link)
"I should know better, now, than to listen to you. Because it always ends in you getting hurt."

He's saying this, really, more in terms of watching his York get hurt on the training room floor, but he doesn't need to say that out loud. It doesn't matter, anyway. He hadn't been able to help him, then, and he hadn't been able to help her this time.

There's a small wince for her tone, and for the fact that he already knows it isn't going to give her the use of her eye back, which does mean that he shouldn't remain being so torn up about it. "Look, I know nothing is going to let me go back and change it, but I can't help how I feel about it. That's just how it is."