Night Winds

Brill let the asari took the clothes, grabbing the towel and turning her head away to let her dress. After all, this asari killed someone already, didn’t want to take the chances of being next on the list because she was peeping. When the asari finally spoke, Brill turned her head back to look at her, eyeing the signing. That was her name.

Brill tried her best to mirror the sign but gave up instead. “I’m Brill.” She added, might as well introduce herself as well. Brill shook her head. “No, I am not going to. You did not mean to kill him, so, that’s okay with me.” What a time to be sent to Omega, get attacked by a drunkard and killing the man.

“Aryna?” Brill glanced up at the ceiling, wondering about the name. She normally avoided any of Aria’s affairs, and she only knew at least one guard for sure. The name rang a slight bell, but she had no idea for certain if the asari was still on Omega, she hadn’t heard the name in years. Brill looked back at Ryana so that she could see. “I am not sure. The name… sounds familiar, but I do not know many of Aria’s guards or past guards.”

“You know, you don’t need to speak without contractions,” Ryana said. She had noticed how the woman’s speech pattern had changed a little when she’d asked her to slow down. “I read lips very well, and you’re speaking a language I understand, anyway. No need to make yourself sound formal. Just don’t speak so fast that your words blur together.”

It was just a brief moment of peace before it all came back to her. The asari’s shoulders visibly slumped when Brill said she didn’t know if Aryna was still on the station or not, and that she didn’t even really know her. That wasn’t going to help her here, but there wasn’t much either of them could do. “It was worth a try, I guess. I was hoping I could find her, even before this all happened . . . but maybe it’s best she didn’t meet me. I don’t even know if she knew I existed,” she said, shaking her head slowly.

She crossed her arms over her chest, almost hugging herself. This felt like one of the worst days of her life, and nothing seemed to be going the way she wanted now. “Do you at least know a somewhat safe place that I could go for the night? I’d love to just leave Omega, but it’s too late for a transport to the Citadel.” She’d have to wait until tomorrow. “And the place I’ve been staying is back the way I came . . .”

veuvenoiire-deactivated20151030

Child’s play? Even Natasha had trouble with Stark’s technology and she was practically an expert on hacking into anything that gave her even the smallest access point. Then again, Stark probably knew this and made things difficult just to spite her, Natasha thought.

“Oh, just someone I know. ‘Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist’,” she recited blandly. “I just call him a pain in the ass.”

She was reluctant to divulge more than that. It wasn’t as if Tony Stark wasn’t a public figure but the consultations that he did for S.H.I.E.L.D. were of a more private nature. Natasha just shrugged as if it weren’t particularly all that interesting.

“So you taught yourself most of this?” she asked curiously.

Ryana tilted her head with a soft hum at Natasha’s . . . description of the creator of the software. She wanted to know, and she could have just looked at the code to figure it out, but she hadn’t thought to. And now, the laptop was out of her hands, and she doubted the other woman would hand it back to her. No matter.

“Well, there can only be a few people in the world who would fit that description,” she said with a small smile. “Stark Industries comes to mind, but I never knew that company to be into software . . . but if they are . . .” She was interested now. Such technological wonders, that company had; it was a dream of hers to be able to even just get a closer look at some of it, let alone work there.

“Most? I’ve taught myself all of it. Learned a few extra things from my boss, but it was simply building on what I already knew. But most of it, I learned when I was a kid.”

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I learned. Natasha wasn’t entirely fluent, as Clint was the only one she practiced with, but she knew enough to hold a decent conversation.

Natasha didn’t respond, simply keeping her eye on the computer but continuing to watch what the other woman was doing. She followed the process carefully, making mental notes of each step as they happened. This was the first and last time she was going to let experimental Stark upgrades get the best of her. But this woman was good. Once Natasha realized what she was doing, she could already see the solution. Give her an hour longer and she would have come to the same conclusion herself but this woman had somehow seen it already.

“Impressive.” She paused. “I didn’t get your name.”

“Like, I said: child’s play.” With a few more keystrokes, Ryana had found her work around, and hit enter. “That should do it. Whatever this system is, it’s very good, but it’s still got a few bugs. I patched what I could, but you’ll probably have to speak to whoever gave you this upgrade, and they can do a proper fix.”

She pushed the laptop back to Natasha, satisfied with her work. “Ryana,” she answered now that she could have her full attention on the other woman. She signed her name sign along with the spoken word: “computer”, but the “C” replaced with the crossed fingers that symbolized “R”. “Would I be able to ask where you got this computer’s system? I’ve never really seen a lot of it before; it’s absolutely fascinating.”

Brill rubbed the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes. Of all the times she approaches a stranger to offer help and it had to be this. It wasn’t like she could just leave it like this. Omega was already a shit place as it was and being an Ardat-Yakshi here. Brill sighed heavily, lowering her hand and shaking her head.

“Of course.” Brill sighed, watching the asari. At least she had reason to kill the man and she had no future intentions to hurt anyone. Brill couldn’t bring herself to just leave the asari on her own after all of this, and with this she was probably fucking herself by doing it. “He had it coming. You were protecting yourself.” Brill added, at least to make her feel better.

“I have… some extra clothes you can wear, I’ll get rid of of your old clothes, and.. deal with the body later.” Brill waited til she finished before grabbing the clothes and holding them out to the asari. “What is your name?”

Ryana dropped the towel, and took the clothes from Brill with a short nod. She began to pull them on, not really caring if the human woman saw her naked. Right now, something like that was the absolute least of her concerns. The clothing fit her well enough, at least, and it definitely made her feel better. She wandered back to where she had left her bracelets, picking them up and clipping them back onto her wrists.

“Ryana,” she said, showing the woman her name sign with the spoken word. “You’re not . . . you’re not going to turn me in, or something, are you? I don’t even live on Omega, I only came here because my boss sent me.” Maybe that was a good thing; at least there wasn’t a police force to arrest her. But there were guards that could kill her.

Speaking of guards . . . “My sister has a daughter here. Aryna. She is . . . was? Aria’s guard captain. Do you know if she’s still here?” she asked. She hoped Aryna was here, but at the same time, she was fairly sure she’d heard the matron had left for the Citadel some time ago, before Omega had been taken over, and then subsequently liberated. “She might be able to help if she is.”

At the strange sign, Brill’s brow raised curiously, her head cocked to the side. At the explanation, she relaxed, understanding what had just happened. “I should probably learn.” Brill observed, shrugging, she had her share of blind people, but it was much easier to communicate with blind people than deaf.

Her head was certainly cleared, any residual remains of the meld was gone, Brill could tell. Being cleaned of the blood probably helped along that process. “Good.” Brill said, folding her arms across her chest. “I assumed the stench was not helping clear your mind.” Brill lifted her hand slightly, nibbling on the pad of her thumb as she considered what she she still needed to do. She lowered her hand again. “I am not concerned with the why. It does not matter to me how it happened. I assumed it was an accident, otherwise you would not be so shaken up.”

From how shaken the asari appeared when Brill approached her, it became quite apparent that it was her first kill. If Brill’s suspicion was even more correct about her being an Ardat-Yakshi, then it was clearly an accident. Brill inclined her head, biting her bottom lip lightly. “Was he your first kill?”

Ryana was silent for a good half a minute, as if she hadn’t seen Brill’s question. She definitely had, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to answer it. The other woman could start to take back all her kindness, and it terrified Ryana. She wasn’t a resident of Omega at all, and she wouldn’t last long on the streets. Not like this.

“. . . No, he--he wasn’t my first kill,” she said slowly. “But it’s been centuries since my first one. He was only my second, and my first was . . . was a friend when I was a kid.” More like a teenager by human standards, but close enough. “That was how I was . . . diagnosed. We were just playing around and got carried away.”

She shook her head. “But never mind. He wasn’t my first, but I really don’t want to have it happen again. Denying myself kills gives me awful headaches, but I would rather have those than hurting someone,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself. “He cornered me and started yelling at me, I think. I don’t know what he was saying, but he smelled drunk. He grabbed me and tried to force me back, and the next thing I know, I’m inside his head and he’s bleeding . . .”

veuvenoiire:

My partner, she signed unexpectedly before speaking aloud again. “He always asks the same thing when he’s not wearing his hearing aids.”

She had known Clint long enough by now to know when he needed to see her to understand her. But at first, she hadn’t always noticed at first and he’d gently remind her, tapping her arm and gesturing in a familiar way that had become their own little sign. He had even started to teach her sign language at one point, something which Natasha had continued learning by herself over time. Natasha pulled herself from her thoughts, brow furrowing as she watched the other woman work in front of her. She didn’t want that laptop out of her sight for more than a second if she was letting someone else even touch it.

“I would have figured it out later,” Natasha said, shrugging.

You know ASL? Ryana asked in obvious surprise. Most people she encountered didn’t know a lick of it, and if they did, it was usually just the alphabet. “I always ask regardless. My hearing is so bad that they barely do much more than let me know if something loud is nearby. And that’s on a good day; I usually just have them in so people see them and know I’m deaf,” she said.

She could see Natasha keeping a close eye on the laptop, and she gave the other redhead a reassuring smile. “I promise not to touch anything that looks private. The issue is a software one, anyway, so I won’t need to go into any personal files,” she said before chuckling. “Maybe, but it’s better to get it done sooner than later.”

veuvenoiire:

Well, this woman wasn’t wrong, if a bit cocky by the sound of it. She glanced sideways, shifting between her hand and her expression, narrowing her eyes. Natasha wasn’t fond of asking for help but at this point, she was too frustrated to argue. She slid the laptop over, raising an eyebrow as she glanced back at the woman.

“You’re deaf?” It was phrased like a question but she already knew the answer. She shifted so the other woman could see her lips without having to try and follow from the side. Then she nodded toward the computer. “And I’m guessing you’re pretty good if you know how to fix that mess.“

“What gave it away? The accent, or the hearing aids?” She was just joking, of course. She spoke well enough that most people didn’t know she was deaf until she told them outright. “But yes, and yes.”

She pulled the laptop closer, already beginning to run a few checks to see if she was correct in her assumptions or not. “I’ve been working on tech stuff since I was a kid. I had a kind of secluded childhood, so I taught myself how to build and fix things.” Her eyes darted from the screen to Natasha every few moments to make sure she wasn’t missing any words from her. “Troubleshooting is child’s play.”

veuvenoiire:

Sometimes Natasha genuinely hated technology. She could hack into advanced systems and get past the highest security firewalls. She could fashion scraps into a device capable of transmitting morse code across the world in an emergency. But sometimes she just did not have the time nor the patience for computer errors, especially when they included new Stark upgrades, courtesy of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s occasional consultations. She set her hands down in frustration and stiffened when someone finally approached her, a little closer than Natasha would have liked. Whoever it was had been staring – for awhile.

“It’s nothing, it’s just an error–” She hit the enter key again. “A really irritating one.”

“If it were nothing, you wouldn’t look so annoyed.” Ryana leaned around a little more to catch Natasha’s words. “Or you would’ve fixed it by now.”

Without another word, she held out a hand and made a little grasping motion with her fingers. “Give it here, and I’ll fix it for you.” She then made a gesture at the other woman’s face, like she wanted her to look up. Well, actually, that was exactly what she wanted. Natasha’s mouth was at an angle that made it a bit of a struggle to read her lips. “Also . . . could you look at me? I don’t mean to be rude, I just can’t really see what you’re saying.”

veuvenoiire

Watching the woman struggle was amusing. Just by looking at the device in hand, she could see the problem with it, and knew how to fix it. The only trouble would be getting the woman to hand it off to her.

“Having trouble, are you?” she asked, casually leaning over her shoulder, eyes going to her mouth.

“Fuq.” Brill cursed, she paced by the door, undoing her hair and running her hand through it. The body was fairly close, people might be able to identify cause of death or they wouldn’t, it was entirely up in the air. She could deal with covering up the cause of death later, there was no way she could clear out the body with so much blood.

Brill glanced up from her thought, the asari giving up and starting to take off the blood stained clothes. There was probably some extra clothes around here she could wear, even if the safe house was frequented by turians. Brill made her way to the lockers, giving Ryana space as she searched for something clean as well as opening up one of the weapons lockers and grabbing a heavy pistol. She clipped the pistol to her hip, it automatically zinging to the metallic clip she had on her belt.

Brill succeeded in finding a shirt and pants as well as a towel for the asari, she could burn the blood stained clothes, and any blood in the safe house will wash away with the water, down the drains. Brill held out the towel to the asari as she finished, washing off all that blood probably really helped her. “Better?”

Without her bracelets on, Ryana was truly deaf to the world. She left them aside, not wanting to damage them in the water, but made sure to keep them close so that they didn’t end up getting tossed with the rest of her clothes. She barely noticed Brill approach, and definitely didn’t hear her ask the question.

She gave a slight start when she noticed the human woman standing just outside the shower, towel in hand. Thank you, she signed automatically, tapping her fingers to her chin and then pulled her hand away in an arch in Brill’s direction.

“Er, thank you. Sorry. I forget not everyone knows sign language,” she said aloud, taking a hold of the towel and wrapping it around her. “I feel better now, though. My head is a lot clearer.” Her eyes had cleared too, the blackness of the left over meld no longer visible in her pale blue eyes. “Just so we’re clear, I did not kill that man on purpose. He provoked me, and I lost control.”

operativegaley-deactivated20171

You’re welcome, she signs quickly.

She begins to walk back the direction they came, although she keeps Ryana at her side, away from anyone else’s sight. The fact that she was with someone practically covered in blood and not rushing to the nearest hospital would raise some questions for certain. She just listens to the asari, glancing at her every so often.

“Not exactly a party trick,” she mutters wryly, not intending for Ryana to catch it. Somehow she doesn’t think her dark sense of humour would be particularly helpful right now. She turns her head, pointedly this time. “Let’s just get back to my place first.”

Within a couple of minutes, Monica is unlocking the door to her apartment, hidden away in one of the nicer parts of the Citadel but with little foot traffic nearby. At least it was quiet, which was what Monica had had in mind when she’d moved there.

“Bathroom is through my bedroom,” she explains, pointing towards a door across the room. “Just ask if you need anything.”

Ryana nods with another Thank you, although this time it’s signed rather than said. She heads off to the bathroom, stripping off her blood-stained clothes once she’s there. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do with them now . . . probably just throw them away. That blood won’t come off.

The shower does help immensely. The cold water is a good shock to her system, and it washes the blood and smell from her skin. The edges of her vision, previously clouded by the remnants of her meld, finally clear. She finds some soap and begins to scrub off any blood that didn’t come off in the water.

“Galey?” she calls once she steps out of the shower. She’s found a towel, so at least she’s not entirely naked, not that it greatly matters to her. Now that she’s out of the cold water, she’s beginning to shiver. “Do you have some clothes I could borrow? I don’t . . . Mine aren’t really wearable anymore.”

#operativegaley

mind-eater-blog

;shit. the word vibrated along morinth’s spine, humming a little melody of anticipation. damn– am i that good at picking the bashful ones out of the crowd? the matron closed her eyes a moment, composing herself. she hoped it looked pensive, as if she was wrestling with herself, trying to decide what could be done to work around ryana’s limitations but in truth she was trying hard not to let slip her mask. she wanted to laugh, roll her eyes.

‘i could sense your reluctance, you were a stone on the dance floor. the waves of the crowd crashed and broke against you– i now know why.’

the other asari, in her modest clothes and hungry eyes– morinth couldn’t believe she had caught a virgin. they were so rare, vibrating at a frequency that almost seemed to be just above her range. most of the time, they were willfully invisible to her. the ones that sat at the edge of the bar and ordered fruity drinks with colorful names. they wore too much jewelry and glitter eye shadow and always smelled of some musky perfume with names like dance whore, dirty bitch or mega slut.

ryana was a varren of a different breed. conservative, soft spoken but she was a quiet storm waiting to break the horizon.

‘noted.’

morinth stated, then interlaced her fingers between ryana’s, then pulled her in tow back to her table. an arm sweeping out, motioning for the other to take a seat, morinth waved down a batarian at an adjacent booth. she pushed serval asari off him as he made his way over.

‘morinth!– my favorite blue bitch. what can i get for you and your friend?’

his voice matched his look; unrefined grease. the zipper on his suit was pulled down to reveal most of his chest, several gold and platinum chains criss-crossed around his neck.

‘get us two black holes and a skyllian blitz.’

he handed waved to another batarian, who fumbled around at their table before jogging over to them. he leaned in to plant a kiss on morinth’s cheek, her hand went to his chest, sliding along his arm to find the plastic bag held between his knuckles. she repeated a memorized number of her account information, a confirmation that she would be paying him in the morning and he left.

the first batarian glanced over at ryana, a pair of brows arching.

‘first time?’

‘never ask a lady a question like that, jasumphur.’

morinth corrected him, giving a tilt of her head and a dismissive hand wave. he begrudgingly left. she turned back to ryana, before ripping open the bag. pulling out six pills she laid them out in two rows. three pinks, then a black.

‘we start at the beginning and if you stay vertical long enough, you get to the end.’

her finger hovered of the first pink pill, then slowly traced a line above them before coming to an abrupt stop over the ominous black pill.

#;ic #;open #[ forgot to reblog this before ]

Had she said something wrong? Morinth’s expression made her think she had, and the few seconds before she reacted felt like an eternity. And when she did finally speak, the words didn’t put Ryana at ease. She knew . . . what? The phrase was so vague without tone, that Ryana was so sure she had just been found out.

She was about to step away when she felt Morinth’s fingers intertwining with hers, and then tugging her along. Ryana was so stunned at the turn of events that she simply allowed the older asari to lead her away from the dance floor without a single question. She had no idea what the other woman was thinking, nor could she tell from this angle if she was saying anything.

The sudden appearance of a batarian didn’t ease her confusion either. His words were lost on her; his language was not something she was familiar with, and the conversation happened so quickly, Ryana couldn’t figure out what even Morinth was saying.

“What’s going on?” she finally managed to say. It wasn’t until she saw the pills that she got some sort of answer . . . and then even more questions. What did these drugs do? Was it even a good idea to go along with this? Ryana was beginning to feel just a little overwhelmed, and it was giving her a headache.

Even so, she lifted one of the pink pills to get a better look at it. She didn’t dare touch the black one; it was intimidating, almost threatening to her. “What do they even do?” she asked, setting the pink down back into its little line up. “Because if someone mentioned it in that conversation before, I didn’t see it.”

She wanted to know what they were, and what they did before she put them anywhere near her mouth. “And stay vertical? I hope this isn’t some elaborate plan to kill me, or something equally as awful.”

#ardatyxkshi

There’s blood on her hands, and it’s dripping onto the floor. She’s leaving a trail, but she doesn’t notice or really care. She just wants to get away, find a place she can hide and wait for this to pass. Her eyes are still swirling with black, but her mind isn’t searching for an anchor. Not anymore. She’s glad for the temporary relief, but she can’t enjoy it, not while she’s on the edge of panic.

She tries to wipe the blood onto her pants, but it only smears it more, and now she can smell it. She gags, feeling her stomach lurch at the awful, metallic scent, and she has to stop. Her bracelets vibrate in a rhythm that suggests footsteps, and she looks up with a terrified and desperate expression.

“I need help. Please.”

Good, she could walk. Brill took the asari’s hand, quick to glance around them to make sure no would think of jumping the pair before looking back at her to see the small gesture. Control? She hadn’t paid attention before, and as soon as it hit her, Brill nearly stumbled back. Oh shit, oh shit what have you gotten yourself into.

Brill shook her head, she could do this. She kept hold of the asari’s hand, despite the fact that… yeah. “Don’t think about it, just keep walking.” Brill reassured her, speaking to herself as well as she helped the asari along. There was a Talon safe house nearby, it wasn’t very frequented, so it would give them the privacy they needed to clean off the blood with no one asking questions.

When they arrived at the door, Brill pressed her left hand against it, her omni-tool registering with it to open the door revealing the safe house full of clothing lockers, freestanding showers, and just a few gun lockers. It was all in one room, just like how turians liked it. Brill made sure the door locked behind them before looking back at the asari, leaning down a little to check her eyes in the better light. A meld, obviously recently. Brill took a hard swallow. “Where’s the body?”

Ryana’s eyes went straight to the showers, and it took everything she had to keep from stripping down right then and there and washing herself off. Brill had something to say, and she needed to pay attention.

“I . . . I don’t--I don’t really know,” she said slowly. “Two blocks from where you found me, I think.” She didn’t know this area of the station very well; she had only been here because a client lived out this way. Her heart nearly stopped when she thought of that, but quickly remembered she had dropped off the stuff before her fateful encounter. The relief only lasted a few moments, however.

“You’ll probably smell him before you see him,” she said, giving into the want to shower and heading for one of them. Normally the whole freestanding shower thing would bother her, but right now, she couldn’t care less, already beginning to strip out of her blood-stained clothes. “He was . . . he was bleeding badly when I left him.” She had tried to help him, but the damage had been done the moment she got into his head.

“What?” Brill spun back around, the asari’s vivid annoyance now apparent. Couldn’t hear? Why couldn’t she hear? Was she… oh. “Oh.” Realization dawned on her, and suddenly she felt really stupid. Of course, noticing that was different than noticing that someone’s eyes were gouged out so they couldn’t see.

Brill pointed at the asari’s hands. “Clean that off you.” She said, slower this time. “You are not hurt, right?” she asked, whoever she killed could have fought back. “You can walk? Follow me, get you cleaned up.” Brill held her hand out to the asari.

“I’m--I’m fine,” Ryana managed, trying to wipe the blood onto her pants. She’d had to get rid of them after this, but right now, that was the least of her worries right now. “I can walk; I’m not hurt. The blood’s not mine.” If it was her blood, it would be dark purple instead of dark red, but she knew the colour would be hard to see in this light.

She was hesitant to take the hand offered to her, but she didn’t really want to fall behind and get lost. “Okay, just--just be careful. I-I-I don’t know how much control I have over . . .” She gestured with her free hand to her eyes, which were still swirling with the remnants of a meld.

Well. “Shit.” Brill cursed, she had her own hand of killing someone, who knew what this one was going through right now, she was probably covered in the guy’s blood just like Brill had been. “Okay okay.” She started calmly, holding her hands out to try and calm the asari.

Despite her best judgement, she did step closer like she asked. Upon further inspection, the asari’s hands were covered in blood, that must be where the smell was coming from. “We should get you cleaned up. Don’t want anyone finding you like this and getting suspicious.” Brill glanced around, they were more or less alone, but with that amount of blood there had to be a body somewhere. Best deal with that later, clean off the blood first. She looked behind her. “I know somewhere, you can clean that blood off you, but you’re going to have to follow me.” Trust me more like, and not kill me like she did to whomever’s blood that is.

“I--What?” Why, why do people always have to turn away when they talk? She had seen the first part of what Brill had said, but everything else was lost on her. She couldn’t see the woman’s lips, but her wrists continued to vibrate to tell her that she was speaking. And this only served to frustrate the matron more.

She waved at the woman, briefly forgetting she could just say something to get her attention. “Look at me when you talk, would you? I can’t fucking hear,” she said, her tone a little sharper than intended, but it was hard to control while she was in distress. “And please don’t talk fast. You might as well be mumbling to me if you talk too fast.”