Making Sure (Spade)

[Iris]

Day in and day out had been pretty much the same thing over and over. Iris spent her time working and when she wasn't working, she was trying to scrape up the money to rebuild her drawing room. It was a pointless endeavor, as it took her three years to get all the stuff she once had. It could take longer. As depressing as it was to her, she knew she couldn't live without working on her manga, so she simply sketched the panels she needed and hoped they didn't smear before she could ink them. Damn life and its way of getting her down.

She wasn't alone in that aspect though. There were many people hurting and sad, but none as much as the previous commander of Central, Spade. Now Iris briefly knew the man before what had happened and she could remember her first line to him. "I'm not sleeping with you." She doubted he wanted to anyways, but she figured she would have to draw the line anyways.

It didn't matter. No one wanted to cross that invisible line, so it really was gone. Her guard was down and now, all she knew was that he was hurting. Honestly, she couldn't blame him. She only knew a fraction of the pain of losing a lover. Her best friend had died in the seige of Fort Briggs- died protecting her and she'd lost her sister and others. So many others. Not to mention the last jackass of a boyfriend decided to just up and leave her to the Briggs Seige. What a jerk, right? it was long since in the past, though. She couldn't really feel.

Too tired...

She felt so exhausted. Too tired to do much more than her job and she was definitely too tired to feel or have patience. However, she could touch on his pain.

She wasn't the kind of woman to pity him though. People didn't want that, it wouldn't help. Hearing the words, "Oh I'm so sorry" over and over did nothing but build the self-loathing pool. Still, she couldn't help but feel bad (though she would never EVER admit it).

When she knocked on the door it was strictly business. He'd missed a day of work and she was worried (again she would never admit that) that he'd gone and done something stupid, so she had to make sure he was alright. How did one deal with people who were a wreck? The last few weeks she barely noticed her own attempts at making him feel better. Mainly she baked sweets that he abruptly ignored or glared at him with a look that threatened him to be upset. He probably didn't notice, but it didn't matter to her. She knew and in the end, she was the only one that mattered. She was the only one she really had.

Either way, her hand knocked lightly at the door. Outside, she waited in her uniform. Hopefully she'd manage to do something right today.