Welcome to Gaia! ::

After returning to the portal room, Wash made a pit stop by the Life labs, and shortly thereafter Sally was helping cart bags back to his room.

"You think you maybe went a little over the top?" she asked, grinning. She still couldn't forget the look on his face when he'd totalled all the receipts.

Sally shrugged, a slight roll of her shoulders. "I guess you've got a point. Still, you made a," she waved a hand in the air, "considerable effort. Plus, you got me to steer you in the right direction." She grinned. "She'll like it, so stop worrying already, ok?"

Sally pranced past him daintily, and set her share of the bags on the floor. She placed her hands on her hips and surveyed the room thoughtfully.

"You really need to redecorate." She started carefully unpacking things, laying them out across the neatly made bed.

"Yes, yes, get out," the smaller ghoul replied affectionately, shoving him out the door and shutting it behind him.

Sally dusted her hands off, and got to work.

First was the wrapping - she arranged the packages in a neat line, swapping the contents of some and leaving others. When she finished that, she began straightening the room - replacing the curtains with darker ones, changing the sheets; but her mind was elsewhere.

Her life before Deus was a blur - she had never had reason to explore it. She felt fulfilled, content with her place here and with her partner. She trusted herself to have made the right decisions then and now, but sometimes, she wondered.

What had she missed?

Sally leaned against the wall, gazing out the window thoughtfully. She wondered if she'd ever doted on a boil as Wash did on Sasha. Had she ever loved someone? That first kiss, the uncertainty; the rush of heat. The passion, and beneath it the larger, more long-lasting emotions. Attachment. Adoration, warmth. Peace. Hope.

She absently raised her fingers to her lips, considering. She adored her hunter on some level, she realized. She loved and cared about him - as a brother, or a friend. It was a different kind of emotion, a different mix; a flavor that was more sweet and less heavy, perhaps. More than anything else, she trusted him. They had been through hell and back together; been there for each other - more intimate in some ways, and yet also less. On some level, she was a tool and he her user, but at the same time, he'd come to respect her as an individual; as a sister, an equal.

Her hand fell, and she sighed. It was much easier to forget, easier to know that any regrets were hidden behind a curtain of hazy half-recollections. She wished she could give him that gift - that she could burn the photos he once kept in his wallet but were now tucked in his Bible. Burn it all away for a fresh start, free of the past. It was silly that the man regarded the past as such an essential part of himself when it seemed to only be a source of weakness and harm. He saw it as a boon; experience and loss mixed into some kind of long, world weary sigh. She could only see it as shackles, holding him back from what he could be.

She shook her head, touseled white curls bouncing against her cheeks. What would be, would be. It was better, now that she was here. This Sasha woman had turned him on his head - and while he hadn't forgotten, he also hadn't had a chance to remember. They'd reached a kind of uneasy peace, and she was eager to see what this could mean for them.

She could only hope.