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_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.”