multiversallogs | none of us are promised to see tomorrow

Entry tags:

none of us are promised to see tomorrow

Who: Kalinda Sharma and others.
What: The (horribly belated) aftermath of the siege on the city.
Where: Various locales.
When: Various.
Notes: I'm kind of using this as my catch-all post for Kalinda. The timing encompasses the immediate aftermath of MONSTER RAIN up to times more recent. There will be individual threads for each character! Want to do something here? You need only ask.
Warnings: ~~Standard warnings for the presence of Don Draper and Alan Shore.~~

It wasn't any easy half-month for anyone in the city. Kalinda isn't selfish enough to believe she was the only one effected (and affected) by the sky tearing open and horrors pouring out. That doesn't stop her from feeling alone in the aftermath, however, no matter how unjustified she knows that is. That she feels a little numb as well has nothing to do with the mild painkillers she's taking for the healing wound on her left arm.

If she were back home - never mind that there are no monsters on the Earth she comes from, so the whole scenario is completely null and void - she wouldn't have anyone to turn to, either. In that much, at least, her situation is consistent. Once, she might have been able to admit to Alicia that she actually thought she was going to die. That time had long past even before she was snatched up to join the population of the city, however. She wouldn't have been able to confide in Cary, either. He might have thought that was his opportunity, or even his cue, to take her into his arms and murmur something reassuring in her ear as if he could retroactively protect her from what had happened.

Heaven forbid.

Maybe things aren't so different here than they were there. The only thing to do is put on an impassive face, and move on with life. So far that's served her well. Pretend it didn't happen. It's amazing how often things never happened.

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It's a beautiful thing, the way that even when the city's been under such tremendous stress, that a person can still do things like get takeaway Chinese food. It's the little things, the simple pleasures, that help keep one grounded when everything's been turned on its head. Kalinda suspects, anyway, that this holds true for most people, that holding onto anything normal is a comfort.

The smell of fried rice and potstickers coming from the traditional white, wire-handled boxes is comforting in its own small way. It will have to do. Leather drapes over her left side, remaining unzipped with her right arm through the sleeve. It keeps out the chill, and hides the sling that holds her arm to her body, even if it doesn't make less obvious the injury.

Kalinda lets herself into the office. This, too, is rather routine. A late night, a late dinner. They both work too hard by other people's standards. Everybody does what they have to do. "Thought you might be hungry." Most other times, she just sets the food on the desk as if he'd asked her to pick up their take-out, and she was merely fulfilling the request. Sometimes, she even asks what he feels like eating. Not always.

She's subdued, though. There's no attempt at blitheness in her tone, no deception that everything is as it should be. Because she respects him.

On days the world isn't ending, Alan keeps a tidy office--perhaps it's that, much as he likes his chaos, he likes it controlled; perhaps it's that he's most comfortable allowing passion to emerge through the odd display of care and restraint; or perhaps he's simply an innately neat person. Tonight, however, disorder reigns. Great drifts of paperwork (someone in the office, it seems, copes with widespread death and devastation by issuing a flurry of memos, and it's not in Alan's heart to blame them), some in stacks, some in folders, but many scattered loosely about, cover his desk. Even the curious little plant--he'd been inordinately relieved to find it alive and well--that presides over a corner of its surface has a rolled missive of some sort wrapped in a tendril.

He looks up as she enters, with an alertness not warranted by steady footsteps and a largely deserted workplace. "Thank goodness." Alan produces a smile, or at least an expression with the contours of one. The impulse is genuine enough--he's just fallen out of practice. "The quiet was becoming..." He trails off, blinks at the empty sleeve dangling at her side. "If that just happened, I say next time we opt for delivery."

Edited 2012-04-17 01:26 (UTC)

Kalinda's desk is in a similar disarray, though it's mostly due to a state of neglect. She hasn't been in the office much to actually organise incoming items. But she doesn't need to do much of that, generally speaking. Nearly everything she needs is in her little yellow notebook. She calls it simplified, but sometimes she wonders if other people think it's sad.

Not that she'd care.

His humour draws her lips into a curve that's genuine, if not quite a smile either. "You should see the other guys." It's a lame quip, but sometimes lame is okay. Carefully, she shrugs her coat off and lets it sort of slide off her right arm where she catches it in her good hand so she can drape it over the chair across from him. She drags the chair closer to the desk so she can sit down to eat, like she's done many times before. "What's up?" Casually inquisitive, with a dash of honest concern.

"You're very adept at that," Alan observes of her little coat-shucking maneuver. He sounds faintly admiring--no need to allow concern to intrude into his tone, not when it's implicit in the words and yet to leave his gaze. He scoots his own chair closer to hers (a matter of a few inches and more symbolic than anything) and opens each of the cartons, watching the steam rise and breathing in the reassuringly familiar scent of the food.

"My caseload's become appreciably heftier," he says, eventually--it waits until he's shifted some papers out of the way and taken up a pair of chopsticks (sometimes--though not today--they'll get an extra set for the plant to wield with a rather alarming degree of expertise). "There's been some reshuffling, due to, ah...we're still in the process of accounting for everyone. Staff and clients," he clarifies, his speech soft, halting--as if he's reluctant to part with each word. He looks up. "What happened to you?"

"Everyone's got a talent," Kalinda returns blithely, though not quite dismissive. It's probably not the first time she's dealt with her arm in a sling. And while she's had no issue using chopsticks in the past, it's a fork she chooses to wield this evening. If she manages to get through the meal without spilling any rice on the desk, she may just do a victory dance. In her head.

She nods solemnly, because accounting for missing colleagues and clients is a solemn sort of thing. There are some things neither of them will ever just shrug off, or make light of. When he asks as to her injuries, she shakes her head, reaching up to tuck back a strand of hair that falls from where it's usually held behind her ear. That brief moment gives her a look of... not quite vulnerability, because it's hard to imagine Kalinda Sharma ever appearing (genuinely) vulnerable, but she looks shaken for a second or two. Appropriately so, maybe.

"Monsters in an alleyway. I was rescued in a timely fashion." Admitting that she needed the rescue is hard, but she's trying to sound flippant. Sadly, a waver in her voice betrays her, and inwardly she winces at the momentary lapse of composure.

“Somewhat timely,” he corrects—humor in the remark, but it's like an ache, a warning of something that shouldn't be probed too deeply or often. Alan snags a ragged piece of meat and chews diligently. He wants—it's nowhere near heartbreaking, a desire that snaps in him like a cheap toy—to steady her voice, to reach for her.

Or he'd like to be the sort of person who would.

“Kalinda.” For a moment he holds her gaze. Tossing down his chopsticks, he retrieves from a cabinet two glasses and a bottle of scotch two-thirds full. “Do you know,” he asks, unscrewing the cap with a meticulous twitch of his fingers and pouring them each a drink worthy of the aversion of certain doom, “what's scared me most about this? The discovery that I can live with it. A sickening number of dead—corpses still festering in piles out there–and...while 'intolerable' is one of the first words I'd reach for, here I am tolerating it.” He sets a glass in front of her, sinks back into his seat. “I could have done without learning that about myself.”

"Somewhat," Kalinda agrees with a hint of amusement. Falling similarly quiet to also pick at, and actually eat her food, there's something about a near death experience that just makes it taste better. But for all she's appreciative of the moment, she finds herself pointedly not looking in Alan's direction.

Lest he decide to be the sort of person who would.

She does look back at him when he says her name, however. Call it professional courtesy if you want to. She releases a breath she didn't realise she'd been holding when he procures glasses and liquor, unsure of just what she'd been on edge for. (And certainly too afraid to actually ask herself why she'd be on edge at all.)

Appropriately -- Reverently silent once more while, Kalinda abandons her fork in favour for lifting her drink instead, listening to Alan's admission with a slight nod of her head. She doesn't realise she's given it until after it's happened, an affirmation that she's in the same boat, in some way.

Drawing in a deep breath, she meets his eyes again and attempts to articulate her own thoughts. "All it means... is that you've confirmed what you already know about yourself. You aren't just going to lay down and give up without a fight. You've only discovered that you can apply that to a broader range of experiences than you thought."

Alan's laugh's had the wind knocked out of it—an altogether pitiful tremor of sound. His smile's a form of retreat, a queasy halfhearted dodge maintained long enough to excuse himself from eye contact. He cradles his scotch—suddenly as appealing as a glass of bile–in his hand and, closing his eyes, swallows down a rising hopelessness.

“I don't believe a word of that,” he says simply. He sips his liquor, regarding her—his friend, the woman trying to salvage something like normalcy here with him in a room at the end of the world–with weariness he's past the point of disguising. “I can't bring myself to do it. It's locker room philosophy—suitable for a winless high school football team and nothing more. The notion of...putting up a good fight”—he remains relaxed, comfortably ensconced in his cushioned chair, even as his voice chips into the word like a pick into rock—“as though there's some pride to be taken in meeting force with force is repulsive. If you lay down on your terms, that's not giving up. It isn't a posture of defeat.”

Edited (running low on distraught icons!) 2012-08-30 23:28 (UTC)

He's had a headstart. That much is clear from the sound of his voice. Kalinda isn't sure how many martinis or shots of tequila she'd need to consume to catch up, but she's sure the answer is more than she's comfortable with. Even with him. Maybe especially, given the circumstances. But she'd promised she'd meet him wherever, whenever he was ready.

She's not going to the hotel to talk, so it doesn't matter if she can match his levels of inebriation or not. She suspects he'll be a gentleman and share whatever bottle he's drinking from when she arrives, however. Provided there's something left in it.

Kalinda never agonises about what to wear. Ever. Except tonight, and that's mostly because she has to wear something she doesn't need assistance getting into. Getting out of it won't be a problem, even if it generally is more difficult to remove her clothes with her arm like it is. Draper won't protest about having to help her out. Not unless he took a blow to the head.

Her blouse, chosen by virtue of it being sleeveless, and a deep red that she hopes isn't too evocative of the colour of blood, fastens around her neck with two dainty buttons. They were far more trouble to fasten than she'd care to admit, but simpler than if she'd had to tie a halter one-handed. Her wardrobe staple black pencil skirt rounds out the look nicely, in her opinion, matched with dark stockings and her signature knee-high boots. Leather jacket's been forsaken in favour of a longer, dark blue trench coat. It doesn't feel quite right, but she has her doubts that Don will care as much about it as she does.

Outside the door to his room, she takes a deep breath before she raises her good arm to rap sharply.

Moments after the knock light in a thin gash beneath the door. Before it swings open a few seconds' lag. Don's shirt's the same, a couple more buttons undone; his hair, again the same but more undone. He holds himself stiffly, as if at once braced for and straining against something.

"Left arm." Eyes already sliding away from her, he smiles wide and crooked, raises his eyebrows in an outsized gesture. Up close his face has a gaunt look. "Lucky break."

Behind him a room hardly big enough to take up a glance: bed, lamps, table, bottle and glass.

"Get in here," he says, voice raw, inviting, laced with desperation.

"And fortunately not broken," Kalinda's quick to quip before he makes his demand. She takes a moment to scan the room in silence before she decides whether to comply. (She'd already decided.) There's a tight coiling in her belly at the edge in his voice and there's a split second where she plans her attack.

When she enters, it's at a saunter, like she's never impressed by anything. Not that there's anything here to be impressed by, present company aside, but that's beside the point. She moves to take a seat at the end of the bed, where she means to stare up at him and wait for his next move.

With a gentle click the door closes behind her. He snaps the bolt in place and stands stretching the instant as far as it'll go, his back to the room. Hand pressed to his face.

Don picks his way to the bed in halting steps, a drunk's barely constrained stagger and something else in his gait. He favors his right leg. Wincing he leans in on her good side, brushes the collar of her coat aside to kiss her neck. "How's it feel?" he whispers against her ear.

Don's movements are watched with cursory interest. "Left leg?" she asks.

Then he's close to her, which is not unexpected, and she flicks her gaze up to the ceiling, even as she tilts her head accommodatingly. As if she doesn't really care about the way his lips brush her skin, and his breath washes over her ear. Like it doesn't make that coiling even tighter and make her blood feel like it's on fire.

When she does reply, it's quiet, just this side of husky: "I feel alive."

Don shudders, the laugh rattling around inside him before emerging low and choppy. "Yeah," he says, not to her and not even to himself. The sound wells up and spills out.

He's remembering a hospital bed.

The fingers at her shoulder tighten, go slack. He sways toward her, into her. Pulls back at the point of collapse, groaning as he draws himself upright. "I'm getting"--the word's been shucked of its final 'g'--"there." His speech is clotted, his smile slightly dazed.

He's going to hurt himself - badly, if he isn't careful. What she means to say is you need to lay down. What she does is climb to her feet and fix him with a look that's sultry as it is demanding. "Get on the bed. Back against the wall." And she doesn't intend to let him begin any sort of argument, she just guides him with her hands on his shoulders, slow, deliberate steps so he can - will get on the bed.

He snatches a convulsive breath, shoulders taut under her hands. Weeks since he was touched in a way not governed by hideous design. He looks her in the eye—his gaze caught there, snared by hers. "For a change?" Don rasps with humor so bitter he could spit. He forces down another breath, swallows; his jaw clenches.

If she wants him to move she'll have to do more than guide: she'll have to push.

Edited 2012-05-08 00:24 (UTC)

She's worried she'll hurt him. Despite all outward appearances to the contrary sometimes, she doesn't want to hurt Don. But if it's going to take a shove...

It isn't quite rough the way she pushes him down onto the bed, but it's aggressive. He needs this to be something else. Something that doesn't resemble care and concern, and she gets that. There's a moment where she enjoys looming over him before she sheds her coat, leaving it in a pool of blue fabric on the floor, and gets onto the bed with him, bracing her good hand against the wall for balance. If the both of them make it through the night without furthering their respective injuries, she'll be surprised.

The bed tips up to meet him. His gut goes into a dive. A moan as Don hits the mattress, jagged pain in his leg clawing him down from his drunken remove. His eyes close; he inhales sharp and strained.

When his eyes open they seize on her. "You--have no right to look that good," he says, smile thrown like a spark, the product of some friction. He presses a hand to her side, pulls her to him. Kisses her bluntly.

He's very drunk, so the words lose some impact, but not all. Kalinda isn't floored by overtures, but flattery is still nice. Even, or especially, from Don Draper.

"I have every right to look this good," she murmurs against his mouth as they part. "It wasn't an accident." Her good arm is already protesting how much she's asking of it, but she isn't about to be deterred. She rolls over then, off of him to rest at his right side. She reaches across her own body to work his belt free, which isn't as simple with only one hand, but is definitely not impossible. As distraction, she drops small kisses along his neck.

None of this is ideal. In fact, it's awkward. Exceptionally. But they both need this, in a sense. She doesn't need to ask what happened to his leg, or if he's okay after watching someone die. He doesn't need to tell her. She doesn't need to talk about how she was terrified that she was going to get torn apart by aliens, or demons, or whatever those things were. He doesn't need to know.

What they need is contact, and a disinterest in anything outside of this precise moment in time.

It's been some time since the sky (and presumably reality) tore open. Everything's still being rebuilt - structures, lives - but as time marches on, so too do the people. There's always work to be done, and it keeps Kalinda sane. So do her connections with people, even if she won't quite call them friendships. Putting that label on it just destines for failure. Still, Angela is someone Kalinda enjoys spending time with. She doesn't take life too seriously; it's refreshing.

That said, as she sits at a small table in a small café mercifully spared the damage that some the building's neighbours received, she isn't there just for a social call. She's early, because sometimes she likes to be, with her CiD out in front of her, cup of coffee in one hand, left arm still cradled in a typical blue sling. Angela isn't just pleasant company, she's also smart, and can probably (hopefully) help her out with a little programming she'd like done.

But that can come later. First, they're going to share conversation, and if Kalinda has her say, pie.

Angela's been doing her own type of rebuilding, less physically and more emotionally, in the aftermath of what she calls in her own words, "Hell raining down on us all and we have no umbrella". She's moved into her own place with Brennan, slowly yet surely piecing together a life here in Baedal the best way she can. This involved painting the walls repeatedly and drawing murals on the bedroom walls until they fit her approval. It helps, little by little, even if it seems mundane.

The call from Kalinda, as any call from her, is always welcome and Angela quickly dresses and heads down to their meeting spot in hopes of good coffee, conversation, and yes, pie.

"Hey you," she greets Kalinda as she slips into the seat across from her, grinning all the while. "I hope you're checking in--what happened to you arm?" Oh like Angela wasn't going to notice that sling there.

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none of us are promised to see tomorrow

» Alan

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» Don

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» Angela

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