none of us are promised to see tomorrow

[betterthansubpoenas]

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.

Comments

» Alan

[betterthansubpoenas]

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.

[alan_shore]

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."

[betterthansubpoenas]

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.

[alan_shore]

"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?"

[betterthansubpoenas]

"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.

[alan_shore]

“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.”

[betterthansubpoenas]

"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_shore]

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.”