CALL ME OUT, 2019 EDITION

[blitzbrained]

I've got a muselist! I've got RP drive! LET'S DO IT

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[nor_iron_bars]

["You think if I told 'em I didn't understand paperwork, they'd stop making me fill it out? It's just too scary." But whose lifetime? Hers... isn't over yet.]

[Is his?]

[They were never officially partners, not in the proper sense of the phrase- he was professional, she was professionally mercenary, they'd worked together... often enough. Enough to matter, even if it didn't officially matter to the people who mattered. Even two people who did most of their piloting by being good at putting away their feelings and getting the job done couldn't quite avoid being a little closer, in the Drift.]

[But it's been a long time since she's done that- with her lungs deteriorating, she's not fit for the field these days. Still useful, with her sheer mechanical skill, but she doesn't pilot anymore. And he doesn't do anything else, anymore.]

[Except... when he does, apparently.]

[Because she's looked at the logs. Gone over them a dozen times, then a dozen more, checked over every single shiny metal inch of the machinery, by hand and by scanner, and all the results say the same thing:]

[Mechanically, there is nothing at all wrong with this Jaeger. Which means...]

The problem is between the chair and the desk, huh?

[She chuckles quietly. The sound carries, in here- no one else wants to spend time in this room, not if they don't have to. That's okay. She's gotten just enough approval for what she's about to do to cover her own ass, which is about all she needs other people for at this point. After that... well, she'll handle things.]

[Or, possibly, die. Always a toss-up, but hey. It's for science, sort of.]

[It's for someone who was a friend, sort of.]

Wetware was never my thing, but...

[Jail doesn't Drift anymore. Except when she does.]

[She leans back in the chair and pulls the headset on. Initiating, and...]

["Hey."]

["You still in there?"]

[spelleton]

[ ("I don't think that's quite how it works." But he had smiled, just a little. A crack of sentimentality in an otherwise impassive facade.) ]

[ He spends most of his time...asleep, for a given value of the word. Maybe he dreams; he doesn't remember. He remembers nothing until the Drift pulls him back, to do what he stepped up to do, had died doing. Is, apparently, still determined to do.

He's tired. His soul - his heart - itches, trapped in a tangled metal cage.

He sounds exhausted, not clipped and professional as he usually does. ]

"There's nowhere else to be."

"You don't usually go as far as the cockpit."

[nor_iron_bars]

[So, he was aware of her, enough to notice her repairs, the little notes she'd left for him in the code. She wasn't sure, talking to someone who couldn't reply- there wasn't any way to be sure she wasn't just tossing those notes into the void, whether he'd ever see them at all.]

[But she'd kept leaving them, anyway.]

[There's a kind of untensing, relaxing back into the feel of being in the Drift after so long away. Like riding a bike- you never forget how to do it, muscle memory coming back to you.]

"Don't get to go out and party like I used to, these days."

[Brief snippets of memory- a fight like a dance, twisting and weaving, whirling around to bring the hammer down.]

"But I got time for a visit, so why not?"

[Her mental presence moves closer in a way that echoes a more physical memory- the two of them in one of the break rooms, weary after a mission, him sitting on the couch and her casually flopping down against him to sprawl out as she pleased, her head against his shoulder.]

[They can probably both guess she's not necessarily supposed to be here. They almost certainly both know she doesn't care.]