It wasn’t unheard of for Dorien to be anxious. In fact, you might have said it was almost commonplace. Inside the constabulary, things were safe and familiar. He was protected by his fellow officers, by badasses with firearms and it was an office of authority that those who operated in the shadows probably wouldn’t advance upon.
His home was pretty safe too. It was under a false name, a fake identity the constabulary had cooked up for him, and he’d set up his own security system that others might have seen as ‘excessive’ just in case anyone linked the place to him, but out here in the open streets, there wasn’t much safety at all. And when you were standing face to face with a woman you divorced only after selling her people down the river, there was damn good reason to be anxious.
Amelie had been a convenient partner. They had come together in combined faith and hope for a better future back when they had been young and naive. Or at least when Dorien had been. Pulling away from The Burning Word had meant slowly falling out of love with her, and sometimes he doubted he’d ever really been in love to begin with, but he’d cared. Against all his better judgements, he still cared. “It’s good to see you too. You look great.” He was only half lying. It wasn’t good to see her, purely because it hurt, but she did look good. She’d always looked good, confident, healthy.
The pleasantries were killing him. It was as if either of them could really say what they wanted to say, not when people were around, and maybe not even when they were alone. It was all too raw. “Living day to day can be a good thing.” When he had been a kid, it was the only thing he’d been able to do. You couldn’t make plans when you didn’t know where you were gonna be sleeping or what you were gonna be eating. “But planning is also nice. You know I always wanted you to do well for yourself, in spite of us disagreeing on other… stuff.”
Being asked about himself was one of his worst nightmares, especially by her, but he made the best of it. “I’m living day to day too. Just out here trying to make sure nothing bad happens. Or at least minimize the extent of bad things happening. You know how drunk, boisterous people can be,” he said with a half-hearted chuckle, trying to give the impression he was more on the lookout for drunken brawls than terrorist attacks, trying to keep things casual.
Amelie could sense his uneasiness, could practically see his skin crawling with the interaction. Facing her had never been one of his strong points and it clearly never would be, no matter what side he thought he was on. He had always been the easiest to manipulate, the arms she could fall into when things became ‘too much’ or she ‘doubted’ everything going on around them. He was easy to sway into or out of an idea and how jumpy he was now, that was a cause of both disgust and smug appreciation in Amelie.
His words were meaningless, the barest bones of small talk, and Amelie find herself growing tired of him quickly. He tip toed around every subject, even the most vague, and it was nauseating to her to keep up her carefully selected act and keep time. Giving him a flickering glance, she let her softened eyes meet his for a moment too long before breathing softly, “It’s good to see you too, Dorien. You look well yourself.”
Curious if she could actually get anything meaningful out of this conversation, she fingered some of the fabric in front of her and questioned in that same soft tone of voice that she enjoyed lulling him into a false sense of security with, “Keeping bad things from happening? Is that what you do now?” Looking to the ground and back up at him again, she continued, “In my experience, bad things happen whether we want them to or not... we can only decide how we react to them.”
