Mar 24 00:16:52 105 PA

From Chronicles

Weather at Tue Mar 24 00:16:52 105 PA (-0.49C, 31.12F):

Desmond enters AIM slowly. Sans his armor now, though he keeps the broken knife. It's still sharp and pointy, after all. The big male slowly scans the building's interior, his expression thoughtful. Though he left quickly, he did glimpse at Cali before he did. Concern.. perhaps a new awareness has drawn him here. He moves toward where he has ever found her slowly, ears perked forward as he nears.

The place she is ever to be found is full of Cali, tools and pieces of an engine. Her head is bent over it, concentration on her features as her fingers move with skill and ease. Her eyes, once you are close enough to see, are unfocused, elsewhere, her mouth moving slightly as if she is talking in her head. She is pale, shadows beneath the honey coloured eyes.

Desmond approaches Caliopa quietly. Something about how she's postured stays him from immediately greeting her. But he does take the time to study her carefully as he nears. Pausing at the opposite side of the engine, an arms length from it. Whether she sees him or not, the big male will drop into a low crouch, one hand to the floor to balance the posture. Quiet, patient, he will wait for her to finish what she does and notice him. For a little while, at least.

Caliopa doesn't see anything in the here and now, her mouth moving silently, one corner quirking briefly as something faintly amusing passes through her head. Apart from that, the pretty face is blank, an absence of Cali in those eyes. Her hands move quickly, without need for sight until something goes click in the piece and she blinks, refocusing on the item, a small smile of satisfaction on her face. "I knew you'd work..." She murmurs, reaching to put it on the blanket in front of her, her eyes seeing clearly now, widening as they land on Desmond. "Oh... how long were you here?" The colour rises, predictably, in her cheeks.

"Not long," Desmond replies lowly, continuing to consider the woman as he speaks to her. "But I can see that you have been active for some time. Have you slept?" The question given a bit of firmness. The big male's eyes focused intently on her. He looks well rested himself. No doubt he hasn't had an issue there.

Caliopa 's eyes drop, her hands automatically reaching for the next piece. In typical Caliesque method, she has them ranged in two collections, a space between them. She takes this piece from the pile on the right, the other having been put in the left hand side one. The left pile is large, full of pieces that shine with fresh oil. "What time is it?" The question is soft, husky, and for a second, the thing that is Cali slides out of her eyes before she blinks, forcing her mind to the here and now.

"Nearly noon." The big feline frowns and reaches out then with his unanchored hand. "Put this down. Look at me." Quiet, firm words as he places his fingers on the part that she has picked up. "Is it nightmares you fear might come or something else?" He has known military folk. And those who have been effected by the horrors of battle. Though his words are firm, there is a softness.. an understanding in his deep voice.

Her eyes drop to his hand on the part, stubbornness written on her face, a flash of it in her eyes. "I have to get work done, Desmond, it isn't going to do itself." Her voice is patient, explaining the obvious to an idiot. "I haven't had any nightmares." She doesn't speak about sleep, the honey eyes sliding to the side, avoiding.

Desmond frowns slightly. "You won't if you do not sleep," Desmond agrees carefully. "And I have little doubt that you have done enough work since the prior day that you will not fall behind if you do rest. Cali.. I came to you for advice before, but I will give it to you now. This is not the right means to cope. I have known military men and women. I have seen those scarred by what they see on the field of battle. I know what I see before me. What I saw before departing that day."

Caliopa 's gaze snaps up to him, the movement matching her tone of voice as she speaks. "I'm fine! I just need to get this done." She turns the piece over in her hands, her fingers stroking it, caressing it reassuringly. "I'm fine." She repeats, her voice softer, "I just promised to have this done, I don't break promises. Yesterday was ..." She hesitates, her gaze sliding away again, "Yesterday."

Desmond sticks to words for the moment, though he does shift a little closer in his low crouch. "Yesterday was a tragedy. A brave man died in an ugly way. You were witness to it, a woman who is not battle trained, nor well tested." He pauses a moment, then asks a careful question, "What do you see when you close your eyes, Cali?"

Caliopa 's eyes fly to his face for a moment before skittering away, "When I'm working, do you mean? I'm just concentrating, nothing else. I can see better with my fingers..." She ducks her head, bending it over the piece, her fingers automatically dismantling it, her mind not needed for this piece of practiced work. "Does it bother you when someone dies and you didn't like them, and you feel guilty for that?" The words are little more than a breath, almost spoken to herself, or the machine's part.

Desmond considers her question carefully. Of course, few things truly bother him. But she is not him and he tries for a moment to think from her place. It is not easy for him. "It may, but regardless of whether or not you liked this man, his death has touched you. Transcended your distaste to mean something. You should not feel guilty, you had hand part in his death." "You should not feel guilty, you had no part in his death."

Caliopa gives him the idiot look again, her eyes narrowing on his face, "I should have shot earlier, or hit, or been looking at something else, not just the blood." Her eyes drop to her hands, now covered in thick, black oil, and a small shudder shakes her shoulders. "All I could see was the alien's blood 'til Kalvin shot past me, and I never helped, not at all." She lifts her face, looking at him again, "I thought he was gonna get one of us killed, not get himself killed."

"So too I could think the same things, but thinking them is immaterial," Desmond replies simply. "He acted foolishly. Charged ahead without a clear call for aid. Mine was one of the shot that helped to finish the last hostile, coming but a moment too late. Any other there may have been that slight factor that would have averted his death. To take in such blame in so personal a way is not proper. It harms you.. is harming you now."

Caliopa shakes her head, her expression worried as she rests her elbows against her folded legs. She is looking at the piece in her hands, talking to it almost. "Might have helped, if I'd been watching out, not staring at the stuff on my hands." Her voice is low, soft, her feelings written clearly in voice, face and eyes. "I didn't even see him move, not properlike."

Desmond will touch her now, leaning forward slightly to take one of her hands in his carefully. Not minding the messy state of them, wanting her to feel a living touch. "Cali.." A pause, then, "You need to grieve. To release what builds inside of you. Holding it in.. avoiding sleep will damage you. You must let yourself empty of it."

Caliopa shakes her head quickly, her eyes dropping to his hand in his, her forehead wrinkling. "You'll get covered in oil." She pulls away, reaching for a cloth, offering it to him. "I have to get the work done, Des. Don't fuss at me. It ain't like I'm doing something harmful to anyone, just working." That said, she rubs her hands on her combats, aware of the sensation of the grease over them.

Desmond lets her draw back and accepts the towel, but isn't satisfied. "Work is not harmful, but avoiding sleep is." He rises, casually rubbing his hand with it to blot away the majority of the oil. It will cling to his fur, but he will tend to that later. He moves around her well sorted out workplace and moves a little closer on the side. "Have you slept since then, Cali? Have you tried?"

Caliopa reaches up to take the towel, her own hands covered in the oil, before she stands, turning to face him defensively. "I wasn't tired, figured I could just get on with the job, not waste the time lying there, thinking too much." Her tone holds defensiveness, exasperation and something else, underlying the others. Fear. "It helps, working. Nothing logical in the way I feel, and sometimes, the machines make more sense."

Desmond gives the towel back when she shows a desire for it and when she stands, he meets her words with a light hand on her shoulder. "The easy path is not always the right path, Cali. I.. I have learned this personally. The natural urge when faced with a fear is to retreat. But the only way to defeat a fear is to face it." He breathes a low sigh and adds, lowly, "I wish I had better words to aid you.. talking has never been my strongest skill."

Caliopa rubs her hands on the towel, cleaning them thoroughly, the skin beneath the oil red and sore. "I'm not afraid." Her words are flat, her eyes on her task, rubbing between the fingers, repeatedly. "How did you go with sortin' things with your lady friend?" The abrupt topic change is not subtle, nor are the slightly hunched shoulders, the bowed head.

Desmond frowns slightly at the sight of her hands beneath the oil. Only more evidence to the big male of her obsession. "Poorly, but that is not why we talk now," he tells her firmly. "You do fear. Fear is something I know well. And your hands tell a very convincing tale. What do you fear, Cali. If you would best it, face it.. speak it and do not turn away." His fingers tense slightly along with an added firmness in his tone. Tangible, but not uncomfortable.

Caliopa 's hands are almost immediately shoved deeply into her combat trouser's pockets, her eyes skittering away from Desmond. "I washed them. They get sore from the work." The muttered explaination holds Cali's ability to lie, amazingly poorly. "You do go on, Desmond. As bad at Atti, fussin' at me." Her hands pull out of her pockets, almost at their own volition, the cloth rubbing over her skin. "It don't bother you at all, seeing someone you know gutted? Like some type of ..of... fish."

Desmond frowns slightly at that. "I did not know the man past a few brief meetings. But.. I am not you, Cali." He decides to crouch down again, getting back on a more even footing with her, his voice dipped to be discreet. "I am trained to kill, Cali, to deal death. It does not touch me so deeply as it does most because of that training. You were not trained as I was.. made indifferent to the realities of war. Though even some who have been trained as I can be touched by things like this. Especially when someone close dies. Or one witnesses a horrid death."

Returning the frown with one of her own, Cali shakes her head quickly, "I handled my parents vanishin' off just fine, handled Perry's death just fine, I can handle this." She rubs her hands, frowning up at the big feline, "Wish you lot would stop treatin' me like I'm some helpless thing that ain't got the sense to come in from the rain."

"Very well," Desmond allows. Because he truly isn't sure what more to tell her at this point. "But it is only a matter of time before the build up within will burst. Unless you let it out." A pause, then he decides to retry the distraction route that she flung at him before. Not without some desire to vent his own build up. "I think that I have lost." A curious statement.

Caliopa 's frown turns into a look of almost complete blankness, "Lost what?" Her distraction technique forgotten in the frustrations of the moment. Then a look of comprehension crosses her face, "Oh, the lady? How'd you do that? I thought things were sortin' out..."

Desmond shakes his head slightly and frowns, a dark little expression that lingers for just a moment before he says, "She says that I push her too greatly.. that I push her away. I tired to tell her my feelings, to open up to her. To express my desire to know more of her, but she turned from me." Just thinking about it starts to get him frustrated, the distraction aspect of this slowly slipping form his mind the more he tells of what occurred. "I think I have pushed her away.. towards him. I do not think she will see me again."

The distraction aspect hasn't slipped Cali's and she encourages him, her fingers playing with the cloth, "What did you say? I mean, folks don't just blurt stuff out, not least they are ..." She hesitates, giving him a questioning look, "What did she say?" She leans against a counter, her eyes on him, the honey colour filled with an odd mix of sympathy and relief.

Desmond tries to delve back.. the emotions having smeared the details of the moment in his mind. Delving back brings a ghost of the bleak expression he ended with slipping through his normal mask-like expression. "That.. that she is the one I see whenever I think toward my future, I see her there. That.. that I feel toward her in a way I have not felt since.. since Mala.." His eyes close and he pauses to draw a slow breath, forcing calm back to the front. With his eyes still closed, he states, "She thought I looked to her as a replacement.. but that is not it.. it is just.. I have no better comparison for how I feel for her." Frustration lingers.

Caliopa listens silently, her eyes on his face, the sympathy winning over the relief in her eyes. "I ain't good at this sort of thing, Des. Do you know if Kelley feels anything for her? Might be just her thinkin' it is something and it ain't. What if he ain't interested? You might get her back, just softly like?" She looks down at the piece in her hands, holding it up as an example. "See, if I try and fix this, doing it hard and fast, I'll twist that spring there too tight and it'd break. If I do it slow, gentle like..." She demonstrates, and the piece clicks into place with a soft noise.

Desmond frowns slightly. "It matters not now.. but I am sure he does," the big male rumbles. "I understand what you mean, but what slow things can I do? She lives with him.. she spoke of him bringing her breakfast.. of doing slow, soft things. I.. I ruined perhaps the only thing I can do with her. To teach her to fight and allow her to teach me dancing. She said we would not do it anymore however. I.. I know little of slow and soft. Mala was very aggressive.. a warrior. I am used to showing my passion, showing my emotion. But whenever I do, whenever I am truthful with her, she moves further from me and I have nothing else."

Caliopa hesitates, uncertain of sharing things private to her relationship, before she speaks, softly, lowering her voice. "Atti brings me food, if I'm workin' late, or forgot the time. He turns up with cookies and stuff, shows I matter with things like makin' sure I ain't forgettin' enough to waste away. Ain't there something of that type you can do? I don't know her, depends what she is like. What does she do?" Desmond sighs deeply and shakes his head. "I know so very little of her as well. I had only known her a few days, only started to truly appreciate her when all changed. Now.. I beg her to teach me and she denies me, even after she has berated me for knowing her not." He considers, then says, "She told me that Kelley got her a job at NTI. That is what she does now. I am not sure of her times at work. If she forgets such things."

Caliopa nibbles on her lower lip, her eyes thoughtful, "Why did she stop teaching you? That the dancing?" She is untangling this, as if the relationship was a faulty engine, her mind clicking through the variables. "Kelley brings her breakfast, got her a job?" Her eyes darken slightly, a thought crossing her expressive face, the thought that Desmond would have stiff competition with that.

Desmond is free with this now, speaking without pause or hesitation. "She was teaching me to dance.. the song she used.. the movements she those to show me.." There is a moment of hesitation there as he fixes his eyes on Cali. "..I am closely tied to my instincts, Cali. She calls to them when she does such things.. I had to request a stop to calm my desire for her. After this, I asked her to speak.. and spoke of the things I told you. I.. I pushed. I chose the wrong time.. the wrong way." His eyes dipping as the truth of his failure comes to the front again.

Caliopa listens silently, her face soft and sympathetic, her fingers fiddling with the cloth. "I guess you got to try a different way, softer path? If Atti had come at me like that, all fast, I'd not have stayed, not long enough to listen, not properly. I guess I ain't precisely like most folks, not most girls, but..." She trails off, chewing her lower lip. "Ain't there someone good at this stuff you can ask?"

Desmond shakes his head slightly. "I know few females well.. Katsumi, but she is aggressive as well. Well meaning, but too unlike Aimee to truly help me." With his thoughts released, allowed to flow out in a flood, he feels a moment of quiet. A moment of clarity. He looks at Cali and states, "You are more like her than any I know. You are.. softer. Perhaps you could speak of things you enjoy.. things you would like for a male to do to prove his devotion that do not push."

Caliopa flushes, glancing down, the softness comment causing the colour to rise again. "Don't know if she'd like having new tools, something puzzling to fix, broken pieces." Her tone is wry, one hand rising to brush a strand of hair behind her ear, leaving a smudge of oil on her cheek. "Atti brings cookies, I like that. Like it when he makes tea in the morning, and we eat icecreams..." The last causes the colour to flame in her cheeks and she looks away.

Desmond doesn't seem to notice the flush, but he catches on the last word. "She likes ice cream. We went to have some days ago. It was pleasant. I had not tasted such things before. But not just that, to spend time with her was.. enjoyable." He considers. "I have little money to buy things for her but I could.. bring her flowers, perhaps. I can obtain them without great expense. They grow in many places I have seen." His mind already starting in on the possibilities.

The flush recedes and she curls her arms around her waist, watching him thoughtfully, "I guess. I never had much use for flowers but some folks reckon they are pretty." There is heavy doubt there, her eyes thoughtful. "Never really thought about them much. I guess they'd cheer a room up a bit. Til they died..." She nods, decisively, "Can't hurt but try it, but ain't she not talking to you at all?"

Desmond frowns slightly at that last question. "I.. I have not seen her since, but.." His eyes close. "I don't want to push again, but I can't stand doing nothing, Cali. I need do something.. if I do nothing, then it is a certainty that I will never know her.. perhaps never see her again." Frustration rises again as his mind flits in various direction to try and find some way, some means.. his natural inclination rising to attack the problem.

Caliopa wrinkles her nose, her mind slowly working through the problem, "Ain't possible to send flowers without being there? Maybe send something else you know she likes? Kid'd be better for this, she knows what girls like, not tools and things..." Frustration at her own limitations shows briefly in her eyes.

Desmond shakes his head slightly. "I.. I don't know what she likes. Except for ice cream. And dancing." He looks to Cali and states, "She likes dancing. Perhaps.. perhaps I could have something dancing related sent to her with some flowers. Like.. an offering of peace. Something small.. simple." He pauses, considering what he could send her that would fit that criteria. His knowledge of dancing things limited.

Caliopa nods slowly, her face showing her complete lack of dancing knowledge, or interest. "I don't know anything 'bout dancing, never really seen the point in it." She confesses, "Icecream is cute though, kinda nice. Maybe a cookie in the shape of a dancer?" The offer is weak, feeble.

The simplicity of the suggestion strikes Desmond sharply. "Yes.. yes, that would work," he breathes. Excitement.. it could work. He looks to Cali and, for a moment, she can see a great sense of gratitude in his eyes, the stoic mask of his expression gone for that moment. "Thank you, Cali. You may have given me one last hope. I will find a shaped cookie.. I will have it delivered.. with flowers and a note. I need only think of the right words for the note. Soft words.. words of peace and invitation."

Caliopa giggles, shaking her head slightly, her smile lighting up her face. "I always end up just sayin' I'm sorry to Atti. Not that we fight much, he won't fight. Kinda is just all reasonable at me, like I'm being nuts." She pulls a face, rubbing her hands again, a faint wince crossing the expressive face.

"I think that will be inadequate.. but I cannot say too much. I cannot push." Desmond calms then, truly realizing this next bump in his path. "I cannot speak too strongly with the words." He goes silent for a few moments, mind rolling words through. "Perhaps.. 'I have wronged you greatly, but each misstep I learn to better dance to your tune.'" A pause as he glances toward her uncertainty. "Is that.. too much a push?"

Caliopa tilts her head thoughtfully, "I guess not..." Her voice is soft, low, her eyes thoughtful. "I like it, tis pretty, thought out kinda." She nods slowly, her eyes brightening along with her smile. "Reckon that'd do it. You ain't in her space, and you ain't askin' for anything."

Desmond nods his head and seems satisfied with her approval. "I will give her a gift card for Happy Burger as well. That is where we had ice cream the one time," he goes on. "That will not cost so much and it will be something she can use to get what she enjoys." The idea gains momentum in his thoughts as he considers it. An energy seems to have infected him, bringing back life to the big feline.

Now watching her, Desmond notes her return to the comfort of her machines. His expression firms and the distraction fades from his mind. Though her assistance and his decisions are filed away for the future. He goes to her side and kneels down once more. "You have aided me, Cali, now I will return the favor to you. If Atticus' thoughts toward you are like those I hold for Aimee, then you should not turn from his attempts to soothe you. It is his duty to safeguard you, even when it need be from yourself. A loved, serious duty. If you must finish this, then finish it. But when you have, go to him. Do not find more work. Go to him and lay bare the truth of your hurt. Let him soothe you, let him do what is surely in his heart." His words low, certain in this moment. "For it is his fondest wish to see you sleep in peace and he shall do what needs be to see it happen."

Caliopa sighs heavily, resting her hands in her lap, her eyes thoughtful. "I don't want to touch it, think about it. When I do, it hurts so it don't make sense to go prodding it least I need to. I got work to do, Desmond, and it don't wait for me to sit around wailing 'bout someone's trouble that don't really cause me none."

"That is the way of wounds, Cali," Desmond rumbles lowly. "Wounds within hurt, but unlike those without, they do not heal right unless disturbed. Allowed to bleed free and empty. It will linger and fester if not allowed such." His hand touches her shoulder gently. "I will push no more than that. But I ask that you consider my words. I must go now. Be well, Cali." A soft squeeze from that hand before the big feline rises and turns. He has given, now he has his own challenge to face. The challenge of being soft.. gentle.

Caliopa offers a smile, no words but a small smile, before she bends her head over her work, the absent look sliding back into her face, Caliopa herself sliding out from her eyes, leaving them clear pools of honey.