#encontrole

plotted starter for @encontrole ;

It felt... strange, being back on the Citadel. After what happened on Horizon, she just felt... lost, really. Even as Bailey talked about how their DNA scanners weren't wrong, that she was in fact who she believed she was, she didn't feel like it. She felt like... some kind of impostor. Like this was all some wild fever dream, that everything she'd been through--Mindoir, Akuze, Virmire, Ilos, even Alchera--hadn't really happened to her. None of it had been real.

Like her memories were false in some way. Like Cerberus had stolen them from whoever Katrina Shepard really was, only to put them in her head, recreate her face... hell, she didn't even know if that much was right. What she did know was that apparently... few of her friends believed it was her. Hell, she wouldn't be surprised if they were pretending, just to keep her from going off the rails.

It was that fact that had made her deeply reticent to meet Kaidan on the Citadel as he'd requested. He'd said he wanted to talk, but... did she want to? After the fiasco that was Horizon... she felt shut out. Forgotten, in a way. Her friends talked about how it had been two years, about how they'd suffered, how they'd grieved her--but what about her? If she really was herself... what about the fact that she had gone through that?

Not like she didn't remember. At least they had the passage of time to heal wounds a little, but her? Alchera was like a fresh wound. She woke up feeling like it had been just the day before, only to find out it had been two years. And in that, there was a sense of lingering guilt; she felt like she'd abandoned them, in some twisted way. She knew what that feeling was like; she'd felt the same things after Mindoir, when she'd realized she was alone. And unfortunately... there was no one around to share her pain with. There was no one there that understood what she'd seen, how she felt, none of it.

Better to just get it over with, she chided herself, swallowing her nerves and entering the small apartment he'd asked her to meet him in. It wasn't uncommon for someone to rent them for a day or two; she suspected he must have done so, just to maintain privacy for their meeting. That, or perhaps he was staying on the Citadel; she'd heard a few rumours about his career as of late.

@encontrole asked:

❝  i’m not kind because i expect anything from it.  i do it because i like how it feels.  because people have not generally been kind to me and i don’t want to be that sort of person to someone else.   ❞

Fitting in when you were in a new place was one thing. But fitting into a new place when you’d grown so used to the comfort of where you’d been for years, in a place where almost everyone seemed to know everyone? That was even harder. Throw in a dash of social awkwardness and some old tension… and it was a mix that drove the small biotic to find the quietest corner possible: the engineering subdeck.

Even then, someone managed to find her. Despite her being awkwardly curled in a corner, she’d been found. Why Major Alenko felt the need to find her, Alisa hadn't the faintest clue, but there he was. Maybe he's just being friendly, she mused. Or maybe he feels as out of place as you do, given what happened on Mars.

"It's hard, though, some days... when people are supposed to respect you." She could recall it: the way people would stare her down like she was the devil, or how in certain major centers on Earth, you'd hear even worse things: that you were a heretic, an abomination, a crime--and those were the tame things they said. She'd hated being on Earth back then, being called a freak of nature over something she couldn't control, something she hadn't had a choice in.

Something she loved. Something that was an integral part of her, a source of comfort for her. Something that was part of her identity.

But the more she thought about how he spoke, the more she knew something was... off. Not off with him, but with her. It wasn't like his name was unknown to her; the fact that he'd helped save the Citadel from Saren and the geth made Alenko a well-known man around the galaxy. It was something else. Bits and pieces of her memory were there, but... why those memories?

@encontrole asked:

[ TEND ]:     sender begins to care for the receiver’s injuries. (;; let's have some fun on Sanctuary and by fun I mean everyone is stressed and Kaidan is here to do his Field Medic Duties)

She was exhausted. It was hard to think that everything was over now; she'd killed her father. She'd killed the man who created her, who took that opportunity to try and ruin her life... the man she had to rescue her sister--her identical, younger twin--from more than anyone should have had to. Oriana... She just had to hope Oriana would be safe now.

But that bastard, Kai Leng... he'd got away, again. He was slippery, and trouble. At least there was a tracer on him now; it was the least they could do. Miranda felt a little bad going off the rails like she had, but the only thing on her mind had been Oriana. She had to save her sister. Oriana meant everything to her.

Feeling her strength wane for a moment, Miranda groaned and sat down against the wall again, doing her damnedest to breathe through the pain. She'd used up what little medi-gel she had on hand trying to survive her encounter with Leng, but he'd managed to get her good; she was just glad her black armour masked just how bad it was, not to mention her already-pale skin was impossible to tell in this light.

"Son of a bitch," she said under her breath, taking a deep, pained breath before she could tell someone was kneeling by her. It wasn't Shepard; surely the Commander would have said something out of worry. They were still analyzing the files from the facility, uploading them to the Normandy's computers so EDI could complete her analysis.

"What are you doing?" Miranda croaked out at Alenko, eyes narrowing. "Doesn't Shepard need your help to--nngh!" Wherever he'd touched hurt like a son of a bitch. If she hadn't known exactly what he was doing, she'd have certainly slapped him away, but she recalled reading on Shepard's dossier, on all of their squad's old files...

Kaidan Alenko was a trained field medic.

                    ♔│ ( more texting ; not accepting )

😍 for a love text

[ ✉: kaidan ❤︎ ]: I miss you. I know this may sound strange, but I kept one of your shirts…[ ✉: kaidan ❤︎ ]: I hold it when I’m missing you…

😝 for an excited text

55. Our muses have sex in the shower.

Under the cut for naughtiness