Gettin’ To Be a Habit ((Bailey/Nadya))
Time passed as it always did on the Citadel; quickly and full of more work than Armando cared to think about. The war was growing worse, more and more refugees piling onto the Citadel in a desperate bid to escape the devastation they’d left behind. Customs was difficult. Violence exploded with increasing frequency. He was tired.
It wasn’t hard for him to slip into a pattern with Nadya, his feet directing him every week without fail down to her corner of the Wards, dropping a few credits on the table and taking refuge in touch and sense that had nothing to do with the angry and lost people in the docking bays. Sometimes she’d taken to offering him dinner when the time allowed, too -- an unexpected luxury for a divorced bachelor mostly in the habit of microwaved vidscreen-dinners.
Far be it from him to guess what Nadya thought of her new regular -- but regular he certainly was, like clockwork almost. It was something to hold onto.
*****
When Cerberus attacked the Citadel, it was an inside job. No one expected an attack of that magnitude without any warning. The wards were in chaos, the Presidium trashed. C-Sec had lost considerable manpower and was strained to the breaking point.
A message arrived in Nadya’s inbox a few days later. Like the man who sent it, it was terse and to the point, tired but without particular self-pity. “Won’t be coming by this week. Complications from a bullet I took during the attack; I’m in Huerta.” There was a short pause, and then this was followed up by another message, almost sheepish in its succinctness. “Hope you came through all right. Let me know, if you like.”
