Re: log: dylan & max
Max's world was largely unchanging. Her entire life had been the Army, and this place was something different that still felt the same. Even Dhaka and its sandy version of hell wasn't a huge deviation from her tour in the middle east and the POW camp there. She lived stagnant, and though she knew McKendrick had been imprisoned, she hadn't (somehow) expected him to be too different. Maybe it was the foreignness of 'thought crime,' or the fact that the term evoked high-end tech in her mind. She balanced a prison made of packed sand against something chrome, and she hadn't factored in resilience.
The General had broken her at the age of six, in a backyard with a gun and a chick. McKendrick looked like he'd been broken sometime between their last encounter and now.
That was her thought when he walked in. She had the benefit of the view reflected in the mirror behind the bar. Surreptitiously, she watched him walk, and she noted things the way any good agent would. The jacket in the heat indicated the possibility of a firearm and, really, that was all she needed to understand just how much things had changed. McKendrick had always hounded her about her weapons, about her circumvention of process, of her willingness to take the law into her own hands. But the man that stopped beside her, he looked like he wouldn't fight her on any of that.
That wasn't all that was different, but he was siding onto the stool before she came to any additional conclusions, and she looked over at him. Her forearms were folded on the bar, and she waited for the bartender to come ask him what his poison was. She ordered a whiskey chaser for herself, because she had a feeling this conversation would require more than beer.
She was older, lines on her face and what little fat she'd had gone from beneath the skin. Her arms were toned, muscle from trying to sweat away memories. The look she gave him was assessing, and her bearing was still unmistakeably military.
"More your style than mine." She paused, and she took a swig of her beer. "Old you. Not new you." Assessment made.