(ಠ_ಠ) (break_the_cycle) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2015-11-22 02:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, commander jane shepard, elizabeth comstock |
Cooking, huh?
Who: Elizabeth and Shepard
What: Bagels!
When: Recently
Where: A place that serves bagels
Status: complete
Rating: Pg-13
Elizabeth inhaled deeply outside the bakery, eying the cakes on display in the window. The decorations were beautiful and intricate. She wondered how it was done and resolved to find out somehow. Maybe the bakers would tell her. It wouldn’t hurt to ask, anyway.
She slipped into the bakery, smiling at the smell of sweets and breads. She looked around for Shepard, hopeful she would recognize the older woman from her pictures on the Internet. She also hoped that the feeling of being lost would go away someday. Everything was new and exciting, but new and exciting easily crossed the line to scary.
Shepard parked partly on the curb, and climbed down to the ground. She had on an N7 hoodie (she had mostly accepted the fact she was a video game and the irony amused her. At least she'd gotten past her negative and slightly suicidal feelings towards the idea.)
She looked up at the bakery, and then strode inside like she owned the place, all five ten and muscle mass. Her face was marked by a thin array of criss-crossed scars that seemed to glow at certain angles. It gave her an intimidating presence, but her smile was warm. "You must be Elizabeth."
Elizabeth turned to face Shepard and smiled widely at the other woman. “I am! It's nice to meet you, Shepard.” she held out a dainty hand to shake Shepard’s. The older woman really was beautiful.
She had calloused fingers and she shook Elizabeth’s hand gently, half afraid of breaking her. She was adorable. “Nice to meetcha too. Hope I didn’t keep you waiting.” Hey, she wasn’t freaking out at the scars, that was a bonus.
Elizabeth shook her head and smiled. “I just got here too. Beside, I could look at the lovely cakes for hours!” She beamed brightly, then motioned toward the bagels. “But our quarry is there. I can’t decide which one to get. I might have to get a bunch and just eat one every morning for a week.” If she got enough to share she doubted anyone would mind. It would make breakfast prep much easier. “What flavor do you like?”
"We should get a cake too." Shepard let Elizabeth lead her to the bagels, and rubbed her jaw. "I'm partial to the sweet ones. Blueberry, chocolate. That kind of thing. They look too much like donuts for me to have one that's not sweet."
“If we’re getting cake then I’d like a savory bagel. Poppy seeds are good, I think I’ll go with that. We can get a chocolate cake for sure.” She smiled up at Shepard, amused that the woman was nearly as tall as Booker. “How have you been since we talked?”
"Pretty good." She shrugged her shoulders. "Kind of a dull point right now. Nothing exciting happening at work and things seem to be calm around the county." Just in the past year there'd been that black hole in the sky that had looked like a super storm, the spider as tall as a small skyscraper, and numerous other incidents of varying degrees of horror.
“So there’s a lot of craziness in the area, right? I read that on the network.” She made her way up to the counter, putting in her order for a bagel and picking out a very fancy cake to eat with Shepard. “What makes it all happen?
“I wish I could tell you.” I’m a video game, all my pain and agony and hard decisions and all the people I’d lost and hurt and defended and saved and none of them mattered. Shepard’s face contorted into a grimace. “Nightmares come to life, it feels like sometimes.”
Elizabeth pursed her lips and reached over to squeeze Shepard’s hand. “That’s awful. I hope things stay settled down for a little bit so you can rest. It’s important not to push yourself too much!” She remembered the disaster that had been starting to learn guitar, embroidery, and piano at the same time. Now she still couldn’t do any of them because they’d each taken so much work to get good at and she’d burned out on them pretty quickly.
Shepard smiled lightly. She hoped if any dreams came to Elizabeth they would be pleasant ones. It was likely a false hope, but she could hope anyway. “Weird thing is I don’t do well when things are quiet. My whole life has been jumping from one crisis to another, and it’s kind of what I was born for. I’ve lost too many friends to just give up and have their sacrifice be in vain.”
Elizabeth nodded, wishing she could understand while at the same time being very grateful she couldn’t. Making friends was tricky enough, losing them would be terrible. “I’m sorry for your losses. It’s not easy to lose someone.”
Talking about her grandfather wasn’t terribly appealing, so instead she motioned to the chairs on one side of the shop. “Let’s go find our seats.”
“Sure thing.” She walked over to the chairs and pulled one out for Elizabeth, then sat down herself. She leaned back and asked. “What about you? Going to college? What do you do for fun?”
Elizabeth shook her head, serving out their orders. “no college yet. I do a lot of things for fun, but mostly I paint and read. I like to learn, so I read a lot of educational books.” she dug around in her purse and produced her latest acquisition. It was a book about French cuisine which she hoped to use to create it for Booker and Anna.
“Cooking, huh? I can’t say that’s one of my expertises, unless you count making military rations out of a pouch not taste horrible.” Which was a skill in an of itself and usually involved copious amounts of salt and chili powder.
“I’ve read that cooking is harder for people who’ve been in the military. I’ve been cooking for my family for years, so it comes pretty naturally to me by now.” Cooking was yet another attempt at keeping her distracted with learning new things so she wouldn’t rebel too much. Of course, it was also quite handy so she didn’t mind terribly. “I’ve never made anything this fancy, but I really want Booker and Anna to like me.”
“When most of your meals come from cans and packages, or is only slightly better than gruel, you don’t get a chance to exercise good culinary habits,” Shepard confirmed. “Just from meeting you, I think they’d probably like you, but it can’t hurt to go the extra mile. You just met them though. Do you trust them?”
Elizabeth mulled the question over, then sighed, spreading her hands palm up in front of her. “I don’t have a choice, really. I can’t live on my own. My father is the only person who has a reason to help me.” Her life was depressing, so she tried not to think about it too much. She met Shepard’s eyes, giving the older woman a smile. “I would like to hear about your travels, if that’s okay.”
Shepard pulled out a piece of paper and wrote her number on it. “You’re ever in trouble, just call me. Okay?” She settled back in her chair, mulling over her response to Elizabeth’s question. “I don’t mind. There’s some stuff I can’t talk about, because it’s classified. A couple other things I think you probably shouldn’t hear. Any place in particular you’re curious about?”
Elizabeth nodded and dutifully entered the number into her phone immediately. She wasn’t going to point out that she knew Shepard less than her father, because it was both rude and obvious. It never hurt to have people who wanted to help her, after all. “Thank you. I’ll remember that. Where did you like the most?”
“Korea. I really liked my time there. I made quite a few friends and the country was beautiful. But most countries are beautiful in their own ways. For the environment, the few weeks I spent in Brazil was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.” She’d been all over, usually for no more than a few days, but there had been places she’d been able to go that didn’t actually involve killing people, and Shepard appreciated that.
Elizabeth smiled widely while Shepard talked about her travels. She made a mental note to look Korea and Brazil up on her phone when she had a minute, just to see what Shepard was talking about. “I know your job was hard and probably not very pleasant, but it must be nice to see so much of the world.” She sighed softly, imagining what it would be like to be so confident and well traveled.
“For the record,” she wanted to clarify. “I wasn’t talking about Brazil’s beaches. But mostly I wasn’t looking at the ocean.” Jane grinned. “That was the good part, seeing the world. There are things I’ve done that weren’t that good, though. But most of it was necessary.”
Elizabeth nodded, though she did have one question when shepard was done talking. “What was beautiful about Brazil, then?” It seemed a strange thing to mention the country but not what she enjoyed most. Beside, it kept the conversation from lingering on the less savory aspects of Shepard’s career.
Shepard chuckled. “I really liked the rain forests, and the animals. There’s this kind of ancient beauty in that jungle.” She picked up a bagel and inspected it. “And the women. Most of the beaches I went to were nudist ones.”
Elizabeth paused for a moment, considering what Shepard had said. “That’s an option? Women being attracted to other women, I mean.” She blushed a little bit, hesitant to admit that she’d been attracted to Booker’s roommate as well as some of the pretty boys in her books. She’d assumed she was just desperate to see any other people.
"For some people yes." Shepard nodded her head. "Gender isn't really an issue for me." Or species for that matter, as long as it was humanoid and sentient, anyway. What? Thane was hot and she'd always had a huge thing for dorky and brainy - yet deadly - blue women. "My cousin swings towards women entirely, too. Is that a problem for you?"
Realizing how her curiosity could have been taken Elizabeth hastily shook her head. “No. It’s the opposite, in fact. I have always liked to look at women as much as men, but nobody ever told me I could fall in love with women. It wasn’t even in the books I read. So it’s nice to know that I do find people attractive and that other people might feel the same way.” It was a simple truth, but a powerful and comforting one. Elizabeth smiled brightly as she took a bite of cake.
"First time I realized it was normal, and not weird. That was a good day." Jane nodded, and then winked at Elizabeth. "A woman as pretty as you could probably have anyone she wanted."
Elizabeth blushed brightly, ducking her head down a little. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I don’t know enough about people to do anything like date.” Which was probably for the best. She had to figure out who she was before she found out who she loved.
"That's one way to learn about people. You should probably get to know people in general first. But dating someone can sometimes help you learn about them, even if all you're doing is sitting there talking over a meal." Jane waggled a bagel, laughing. "Plenty of people just date for fun. It's not always about finding love, though that can come from unusual circumstances." Her tone indicated she'd had experience in that area. Experience that wasn't entirely positive.
Elizabeth blushed more. “Oh, is this a date, then?” She hadn’t expected that, but life was full of things she hadn’t expected. By now she was more or less used to it. All that mattered was that she knew how to behave.
“This could just be a casual thing, I was only joking. But do you want it to be?” Shepard raised an eyebrow. She’d been trying very hard not to flirt at Elizabeth. “Because I’m not against the idea.”
Elizabeth considered the idea for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. Then it’s a date.” She took a couple bites of her bagel, letting that decision sink in. “What usually happens on dates? Just what we’ve been doing?”
"Pretty much. Sometimes you dress up. Sometimes you dress down, like at the beach." Shepard took a bite. When her mouth was clear again, she added just to see Elizabeth blush. "If a date goes really well you sometimes end up having breakfast together the next day."
Elizabeth knew just enough about biology to understand that an innuendo had occurred. She blushed, as predicted, but after a moment or two she had to ask, “How does that work with two women?”
Shepard managed to not laugh. Elizabeth didn't deserve that and curiosity was natural. "See this is where I'd tell you that I can show you. But it's a lot like taking care of yourself. Just doing it to the other woman. With... other things you can do that are impossible to do alone. And ways to make it like being with a man if you're into that."
Elizabeth wasn’t sure what to make of that information. She decided it would be less awkward to look it up on her phone. She did blush at the idea of having sex with a near total stranger. “I think I’m going to wind up texting you when this information becomes important to know.” She giggled at the mental picture, hoping that some kind of instinct would kick in if she did get into a sexual situation before she’d had a chance to Google her questions. “So do you have a girl or boyfriend?”
"Text me anytime," Shepard replied, though there was a twinkle in her eye that implied she'd be open to more. "Don't have either. I was seeing someone for awhile, but we kind of drifted apart."
It had been one of the longest relationships she'd ever had, really. And then Regina had decided they shouldn't be together. Jane deserved better, she'd said. Jane hadn't had the heart to fight a battle she'd known she'd lose.
"But things like that happen."
“Oh, that’s too bad,” Elizabeth said softly. “Well, I’m sure a beautiful woman like you won’t be single for long, unless you want to be which is totally understandable. I think I’m going to focus on figuring out my future before I start dating seriously.” She finished her bagel, smiling at Shepard. “Though I am enjoying this.”
Jane absently touched one of her scars. "That's probably a good idea. Don't date until you think you're ready. But sometimes you'll meet someone who makes your head spin. Don't discount that either. Learn to live."
Living was important, and people like Elizabeth were one of the things that Shepard had fought for. In both universes. “Just look out for people who might take advantage of you. I’ll hit them for you.”
Elizabeth smiled shyly. “Thank you. I’d like to think I’d hit people taking advantage of me myself but I might not even realize it’s happening.” She sighed a little, rubbing the back of her head. “I wish I understood more things. I feel like my grandparents had good intentions, but in the end I’m worse off for what they did.”
“That’s how it usually happens. Then you’re in so deep that it’s too late and you can’t get out.” Shepard gestured out the window with a half-eaten bagel. “The world isn’t a kind one. There’s good people, things to fight for, but it can also be really harsh. No one was ever done any favors by being hidden from it.”
Elizabeth nodded. She knew that there was a lot wrong with the world, thanks to the Internet. It was a scary place and she hoped Booker would remain patient enough to help her through it all. “I wish things were better. There’s so much suffering. This can’t be how it’s meant to be.”
“No, probably not. But as long as people fear those that are different, it’s going to be that way. At least until we find something that makes it a little more obvious that we’re all the same anyway.”
Elizabeth sighed and finished her bagel. “I don’t know what will make that happen. Everyone is so different, but you’re right that certain things are true about everyone. I wish we could all see the common ground.”
“It’s there. Just gotta ignore the idiots.” Shepard finished her bagel. “Want to go see a movie? That’s something else people do on dates.”
Elizabeth nodded, pulling out her phone to text Booker. “Sure! What kind of movies do you like?” She wanted to check in so he’d know where she was and not to worry. It was hard accepting how much freedom she had, so little things like checking in made her feel less guilty for being outside.
"I like a lot of action, or something funny. Not too picky really, as long as it's super offensive." But offensive differed from person to person and there weren't any really bad Asari stereotypes to worry about, at least. Shepard liked the Asari, damn it.
“Something funny sounds nice,” Elizabeth replied enthusiastically. Humor was so interesting to her because she wanted to understand it but usually she didn’t. That just made it even more fascinating.
Her enthusiasm was infectious. Shepard looked forward to this, and hoped she didn’t mind if her arm ended up around her at some point. Hey, she wasn’t a bad person, but she wasn’t a saint either.