Backdated to Jan 30th

She stuck out in group therapy like a sore thumb. Everyone knew the ambassador’s daughter without really having to try to find her - she was too small and too frail to ever match the rest of their group, mostly soldiers on their way to medical discharges, PTSD diagnoses on top of line-of-duty injuries that would never leave them fit for service. Carson’s cast was finally off, but the rockslide had broken every large bone in his leg and he was still limping around on crutches.

The ambassador’s daughter had a feeding tube in her nose. A ballerina disease and PTSD, said some of the others in their group dismissively, which was no way to act within earshot of someone in recovery. No wonder she never talking in group.

But she was lovely, and delicate, and Carson had seen her trying to hide her laughter at a joke he’d made earlier and not talking in group didn’t mean not talking, period, and he was supposed to be trying to make new friends (he’d lost most of his) so after session, he hauled himself up on his crutches and waited for the group to thin out a little bit and then hopped over to her, his bad ankle raised in the air behind him.

“Elke?” he asked carefully. “I was wondering… would you like to go grab a coffee with me?”

Shibrogane
Recovery was a battle, and group therapy was its main battleground. She played her cards close to her chest, kept her eyes directed at the knees of the person across from her, and said nothing. Every single word that fell out of the others’ mouths, though, she heard them and she recorded them to play back later, at night, when she was asleep. They thought she was looking for a husband, thought she was a spy for some journalism project meant to expose the cruelty of the soldiers, thought she was this or that or the other thing.

None of it really came close to the truth, which was: she was placed here because sometimes she remembered fighting in a war that didn’t end, could never end, and could never be won. Her tears in group weren’t faked, even if her distaste and even hate for her comrades was virulent, as it could sometimes be.

She wanted to talk, but it went without saying that they wouldn’t believe her.

One of them approaching her after group was unexpected. She looked up at Carson Macleod, one of the soldiers being invalided home. He’d gotten his casts off--which she was glad for, because she liked him, he didn’t talk s**t about her--but still had the crutches. Which didn’t make him any less tall, unfortunately. “What,” she said, unsure if she had heard him correctly. Coffee? With her? That was a long walk off a short pier, socially speaking, if she’d read the currents of the group right… and she had, she knew it. “...If you’re sure.”

She got up and shouldered her bag. It was heavy with a Latin textbook--but so many things were heavy for her, these days. She didn’t even really like wearing coats. “Sergeant MacLeod, right,” she asked, quietly.


Sergeant was correct, and would be for a few weeks more, but Carson was already trying to wean himself of the hard-won title and the sound of it in other people’s mouths. He was as good as a civilian, even though he still wore his uniform, one of the legs bloused awkwardly above his orthopedic boot. “Just Carson, please,” he said. Everything together just now probably constituted the most words he’d ever heard her say - she had a sweet accent, mostly French, a little bit not, like someone who’d traveled as a child.

“And yes, I’m sure,” he added. So what if it would provide the rest of the group with silly amounts of gossip? He’d be out of here soon enough and she was one of the few people whose acquaintance he might actually care to keep, if only he could get to know her a bit better. She seemed interesting, such an odd fit for their therapy group, and yet… if it weren’t somehow helping her recovery, she wouldn’t keep coming, would she?

“There is a little cafe at the end of the block,” he said. “I’m supposed to be practicing my walking, and it’s not too far.” He’d hate to go somewhere with her and then get stuck, unable to make it back to the hospital. “And it’s a nice day. For January. All the snow has finally melted.”

It had been so icy. He’d missed going outside like a locked-up dog.

Quote:
“Carson,” she repeated. The last time someone had asked her out for coffee… it was long enough ago that she couldn’t remember who had done it. Not Avery. Maybe… Grayson? But this wouldn’t be a date already, would it? She had said all of seven words to him. Eight, now. “Lead the way.”

She followed him out of the building, slinging her small backpack over her shoulders and zipping up her frock coat. Though it fell below her hips, her knees--knobby behind the ashy rose wool of her winter tights--were still exposed. She could wear pants and be warm, or she could be comfortable in her clothes. It was a fight against the weather that she wouldn’t win. The sidewalks, at least, lacked in ice. Nevertheless, she watched Carson, ready to at least try to catch him if he were to slip. He was at least a foot taller than her, even on crutches, but she’d try.

The little cafe’s summer awning was rolled up tight to the brick, and a little plastic booth huddled against the door--she pulled the first door open for Carson, and the second. “I’ll buy,” she said, pulling her scarf down from where it had covered her mouth. That, at least, would clarify if it was a date or not. Wouldn’t it?


Fortunately, Carson was rock-steady on his crutches. It would have been horribly embarrassing, he thought, if he had asked Elke to coffee and then fallen on her. She didn’t look strong enough to catch him, and if he probably weighed twice as much as she did… honestly, it was just a recipe for disaster. “I invited you,” he said in response to her offer, but he was glad she was holding the doors - he doubted he could manage them on his crutches.

Being injured sucked. Majorly.

“I mean, uh,” he said, moving over to make room for her in front of the bakery case. Was she offering because it wasn’t clear if this was a date or not? He hadn’t - he hadn’t meant to put her on the spot like that, just to get to know her better! Carson would never!

Well, Carson would consider it. But he would not, in practice, be so forward. “This is just platonic,” he hazarded. “I didn’t - I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.”

Quote:
“I accepted,” she said, in a tone that could have been dry humor or could have been very serious. Or both. Or neither. Whatever. She smiled at him, tiny and secretive, an expression that didn’t really reach her eyes. At least her question had been answered. Her shoulders relaxed a little inside her coat, and she considered the little cakes and cookies. Chocolate mousse--454 calories. Thirty-two grams of carbohydrates. Lemon curd tarts, three hundred and sixty two calories per each, fifty grams of carbohydrates, all from sugar…

Her stomach gnawed at her, insistent, and she flicked a glance over to Carson. Ballerina disease. She pulled at a loose thread in her scarf, and said, “What are you thinking of getting?” Maybe they could share--but if it wasn’t a date, that would be sort of weird, wouldn’t it? They weren’t that friendly. She hadn’t even said much to him. Anything. It was unfair, she supposed, since she knew so much about him and all he knew about her was that they were in the same therapy group…

Soup. Her eyes lit on the specials for the day, and she let out a breath she didn’t remember taking. The world was not yet over. “If it’s just acquaintances, we should pick up our own tabs,” she said.


Well, that was… fair, thought Carson, and if he noticed how intently she was studying the bakery case then he wasn’t thinking anything odd about her behavior. Everyone in group was recovering from their own issues. He knew she was in treatment for anorexia, but he also figured she was far enough along in that treatment that she could deal with her own issues. “Okay,” he said, with a smile that he meant to show her that it really was okay that she’d asked him to do that.

“Espresso and a pain au chocolat,” he said, in terribly-accented French that he knew was bad. There were a lot of great things about being reassigned to a hospital in Paris! Having to learn French was… maybe not so great. He was doing an okay job of it, he thought, considering he was a yankee jackass whose entire non-English vocabulary had previously consisted of about fifty words of Arabic.

“And then we can grab that corner table?” he asked, pointing to the two-top by the window. “I can lean my crutches against the wall over there.”

Quote:
“Espresso et un pain au chocolat,” she corrected, absently. Perhaps that wasn’t kind of her. She smiled apologetically, and stepped up to the counter to order. Forty-three calories in the teaspoon of honey that would go into her mint tea, sixty-seven calories in a cup of soup… she would put the crackers in her backpack for later… Elke shook her head, and paid, counting out euros without even looking at the bills. Her change went right back into her backpack.

Once Carson ordered and she had their drinks in hand, they moved over to the table he’d pointed out. She slipped the numbered card into the holder and settled herself. “Thank you for asking me to coffee,” she said, smiling. This one reached her eyes, which crinkled at the corners. “May I ask why today?”


He smiled as he took his drink from her and considered the question. She would probably be put off if he told her he’d been considering asking her out for like a week and a half now, right? It made this look less spontaneous, less platonic. “You laughed at one of my jokes,” he said. “I’d like to get to know you better.”

There’s a reason why a nineteen-year-old girl was placed in a PTSD therapy group with a gang of combat veterans and not a group of her peers. Could anyone blame him for being curious about that? It probably wasn’t a welcome intrusion… crap. He could already see where he’d messed this up - it sounded like a date! Why couldn’t a guy take a girl out for coffee and tell her it was platonic and have it be platonic? Carson was in no shape for any kind of romantic entanglements, never mind pursuing sex with someone just as deep into recovery as he was.

“I mean,” he said, going red at the consideration. “Um. I’ve got my discharge date. Three weeks from now.”

Quote:
“It was a funny joke,” she said, hiding her face in her tea for a moment. Even if they were to become friends, he’d be leaving, and she’d be alone. Again. “I knew someone in the Air Force.” Sort of. Gunn was Finn’s friend, not Elke’s. “I couldn’t picture her participating in anything that stuck her behind a desk for more than ten minutes.” That was all. She tapped her fingertips against the side of her cup. Finn. And Orianna. And her failure...

She refocused on the subject at hand, one hand drifting to her hollow stomach. Too hollow. “Congratulations. Have you thought of where you’ll go?”


“It was… a generalization,” said Carson, half wishing he could take the joke back. It had been safe to make amidst fellow soldiers, and he hoped that her laughter was not a sign of her having been somehow offended. He doubted it was, even with mention on the acquaintance in the air force - people did not typically laugh when they were offended. “When you’re in the army… you pick up these jokes… I guess i need to stop making them, if I’m going back to civilian life. Sorry.”

He nudged his espresso to the side to make room for their food to be set down. “My brother and his family live in Destiny City in Virginia, if you’re familiar with it?” He had the understanding that she’d spent some time in the States, but not specifically where. “I don’t really have any other family, so I’m planning to settle down there. At least for a while. There’s a public university with really good veterans’ benefits.”

He had to get his life back in order somehow, and school seemed like as good a place as any to start.

Quote:
"I wasn't offended," she said. "Kaatje would have been. That's why it was funny." She tried smiling at him again, hoping to defuse whatever sore point she'd touched. Elke set both hands flat on the tabletop and stared into the bowl of soup that had been brought to her instead of the cup she had paid for. That was the danger of tiny hole in the wall cafes, especially in this arondissement. They saw a skinny Turkish girl and got upset. She shuddered, and picked up her spoon.

Destiny City. The words tasted like ash in her mouth. "I went to high school there," she said. The way she had cartwheeled through the different schools... First Crystal, Barren Pines, Crystal again before Meadowview and finally HITS. She had finished her diploma at a little school in the mountains of Switzerland. "For a while. It's a dangerous place." She clenched a hand in her napkin and took a deep breath. Nothing to cry about, s**t happened and she had to deal with it. Preferably without causing any collateral damage--no more dead boyfriends, no more estranged pseudo families, no more--

She put a hand over her mouth and took a deep breath. No more, she thought, setting down her spoon. "What are you going to study," she asked. "I--a friend of mine just graduated from Destiny City University. He works with the park service now."


"Small world," remarked Carson, trying not to sound as surprised as he actually was. He'd known that Elke had spent time in the United States, but he'd hardly expected her to know his hometown, let alone have lived there. It wasn't, as far as he was aware, the first place anyone thought of when asked to list major cities in America.

"I've heard things to that extent," he added, to counter her mention of Destiny City being dangerous. It wasn't that Carson wasn't concerned, just that, well, he didn't have a whole lot of other options. "Marcus is the only family I have," said Carson, "And he's not interested in moving, so if I want to be close to him, then I've got to be there." Though, he thought, it was charming that she was worried about his safety?

"I'm registered for a Criminal Justice program," he said, tearing a piece off of his pastry and dipping it into his drink. "So I'll see how that goes and then decide what to do after that."

Saying anything about law school seemed like getting terribly far ahead of himself.

Quote:
She smiled a little. “Be careful,” she said. “Or you’ll find yourself in the middle of another war. That one, no one’s kind enough to wear uniforms.” Or to even try to leave civilians out of it. Elke tried to smile a little wider, to minimize the concern she felt--but she couldn’t. Even if she hadn’t been a senshi, she’d had to survive an organ-theft ring disguised as a school, been attacked by her pseudobrother and her boyfriend at the time… She’d seen things.

But she was a senshi. She was a soldier, part of an elite group so strong that the Moon Queen had once agreed to give them a home within their galaxy. The war hadn’t changed so much since her last life that she didn’t know the risks for the innocent. No matter how skilled Carson was at self-defense, the dangers there… “It’s always good to be near family,” she said, finally. “And Criminal Justice in Destiny City… you’ll never be unemployed.”


Well, that was just… weird, thought Carson, frowning despite the aggressive attempts she was making at smiling. Marcus had mentioned some of the stranger injuries he’d seen in his work as a trauma nurse and chalked things up to a gang war going on in the city’s streets that no politicians or law enforcement could quite get a handle on, but...

“You seem familiar with it?” he hazarded. “I mean. Not that I’m suggesting you’re in a gang?”

Well, maybe that was where the PTSD factored in? Gosh. And she’d seemed so normal. “Never mind me,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what’s going on at all and I don’t want to presume.”

Quote:
“Maybe you heard about the Barren Pines organ ring,” she said, after a moment’s thought. She didn’t elucidate, just stirred her tea, like that would make it less objectionably sweet. If she didn’t eat, her maman would know. Maman picked up how to tell tired-trembling from hunger-trembling from trying-not-to-scream far too quickly for Elke’s tastes. She slanted a glance at her bowl of soup and shuddered.

She’d rather get nutrient soup shoved through her nose than put anything else in her mouth.

Her ash-blonde hair straggled over her shoulders, and Elke busied herself braiding it. “Many of my friends were,” she said. It wasn’t a lie. “In the gangs, I mean. Most of them still are. It’s… hard to…” She lapsed into silence, and looked at him helplessly before changing the subject: “What’s your brother’s family like,” she asked. It wasn’t a skilled subject change, but it would do.


It was enough of a confession that he drew the conclusion she’d likely been trying to avoid. Elke had, thought Carson, one way or another, been caught up in the gang war, and if she was out of it now, it was likely for only as long as she stayed away from Destiny City. He’d never heard of the organ ring she mentioned - likely, it had happened while he was away in the army and paying very little attention to goings on in his hometown - but he did notice the way she was looking at her soup now.

He hoped that this conversation hadn’t ruined what little appetite she had. Clearly it was something of a sore subject, and Carson felt a stone form in his gut.

“My brother Marcus is a trauma nurse,” he said, taking her change of subject. “He’s five years older than me. His wife Annie is a lawyer - she does adoption and custody law, mostly?” From what he knew, it was brisk business. “They’ve got a daughter. Lou - my niece? She’s eight. I have a picture of her here somewhere.”

He took out his phone, scrolled through a few screens, and then held it out to Elke. The displayed picture was a selfie taken by a curly-haired, bright-eyed eight-year-old.

Quote:
Elke took the phone and looked at the photograph. “She’s lovely,” she said. Adoption and custody law, trauma nursing… She shuddered again, thinking, maybe she’d met Carson’s brother, in all the times she’d been in and out of the hospital. Hematite’s boomerang blade slicing through her stomach, broken limbs, the car crash… Elke smiled at him, and passed the phone back. “They all sound lovely.”

If she just had avoided all of that… well, there was never a chance of that. She’d been born to be the senshi of innocence. What was it like, to be free of all that? “Will you be staying with them, when you go back?”


There was some sort of sadness in her voice that Carson couldn’t quite place - again, he supposed, going back to her mysterious past, and he could only pry as far as she was willing to let him. “Yeah,” he said, putting his phone away. “They’re great. But I don’t want to be all up in their hair. I’m planning to rent a place. I know I’ve been away from civilian life for a long time, but-”

He shrugged. He was out of the army and there were only so many directions he could take that. He’d rather get his life together near the part of his family he could stand than far away from them. But in the meanwhile - he still had a few more weeks in France. “Would you like to see a movie with me sometime?” he asked, changing the subject. Best to focus on the present - future plans could only get you so far.