Blood Money [Citadel]

The Thane Krios Memorial foundation was located in a typical Citadel office block. It had taupe carpets and generic fabric partitions and 'ornamental' plants, like any other office.

The office staff, however, was completely drell. Bright and colourful, they stood out against their generic background.

The entire operation was what Kayana called drell-for-drell. The staff was drell, as were all the people in the pictures on the wall (wait, there was one Salarian, shaking a drell's hand). The campaign posters used drell scripts and drell faces. The religious symbols hanging over the doorways were traditional polytheist. Nobody took notes, little was labeled, and the heater was cranked up.

They could identify the human as Kay's guest simply because she was the first female human visitor of the month. The receptionist leaned back and yelled for Kayana, who stepped out of a back office with a wave. Unclipping her tool belt and leaving it on her cart, the younger drell strolled over to the main desk.

"Hey Sarah."

Sarah was in unfamiliar grounds. She'd rarely had encounters with Drell before- Apart from Kimon, one of the men whom she owed a great deal. The woman seemed uncomfortable and folded her hands into her leather jacket pockets, before turning wide blue eyes at the approaching Kayana.

"Hello. I'm here to donate? I sent you a message- Thanks for sending me the address, I'm sorry I wasn't able to donate this to you at the charity dinner, there was a thing at the LTD office that I needed to take care of and I wasn't in any position to return afterwards-" She spoke at quicker pace and never broke away from her subject of attention.

"But I'm here now!"

Kayana shrugged, sitting down on the edge of the desk. "Hey, I know that LTD has security issues. If it needed to be dealt with right away, then I just hope she'll finally cave and hire more dudes. I swear she's got Snow doing the whole damn thing."

"I was about to do a stimulant drinks run, if you want to walk and talk?"

"Sure." She stepped back away from the door and opened it, allowing Kayana to pass. "I've never really been in this neighborhood, where's a good place to get them? I'm trying to map out new jogging routes but .. Well, you know, the 'motherhood' thing has been taking up the majority of my time."

She sighed. "I- Am I talking too much?"

"There's no way you're talking more than me." She grinned, gesturing for the human to follow. "Come on, the coffee shop is this way. It's down like, two alleys."

"I can't wait to be a mother. How old is your little person now?"

Eventually, she interrupted the chit chat with the proverbial bat to the knees. "Yeah, I was kind of curious why you want to give to us. You can see it's...not really a multilateral effort"

"He's coming up on three, four months." Sarah glanced over at the drell. "I never thought I'd be a mother, but it's grown to the greatest thing I've ever done." After Kayana asked the more difficult question, Sarah sighed, and quickly thought of a response.
"It's not like you're the only small charity that I donate to. Leaving the Ducts is another. I also donate to the local C-SEC fraternal organizations and the Interstellar Red Cross and various others." She crossed her arms and stopped.

"Alfred Nobel. I read about him when I was trying to find ways to go forward with my life after I got back to the Citadel. He was a chemist on Earth, the inventor of dynamite. Dynamite is a constructive tool but it also killed countless through accident or deliberate means. When he was an older man, a newspaper printed an obituary before he'd died decrying his actions in life, so he strove to leave the world a better place than he'd come into it." She shrugged. "I'm no Alfred Nobel, but I've done more than enough horrifying acts in my life to justify repentance, so if I donate to a small charity and volunteer for you, why not?"

"I come from a big family. However, big family on small budget kind of blows." She couldn't pass a rail without trying to balance on it. "Four months is...wait, what can human babies do at four months?"

Human babies were strange-looking, like overinflated preemies. By the end of their first year, they thinned out and lost their strangeness. "Leaving the Ducts works with humans though."

"It's nothing like, racist, your credits are good. But...this is an organization about pride in our greatest hero, a victim of our two racial tragedies. My foster mother had Keprals. The murders I have to atone for were kind of commited in this context. It's our lives...and I feel like I'm in some kind of charity mutual fund. Like, no, what actually speaks to you? Coffeeshop!" She pointed.

"What speaks to me about your organization is that you've become organized, you're trying to right wrongs that you see and you're using non-violent means to attain them. You put that bastard 'Humble Hanar' in his place every time he makes a cross statement, and I - I presume you all are working for a treatment for Kerpal's syndrome?" She turned to face the female drell and seemed to drop the act.

"A drell saved my life on Omega. I was escaping from Cerberus and I'd been shot in the head. He helped me off of the station and he helped me get the life I have today. I owe him a great deal, I haven't been able to find him for some time so I thought the next best thing was to help his people in any means that I can."

She stepped into the small coffee shop and took a seat.

"As for my baby, at three months, his interests are mostly me, napping, eating, and pooping."

Kayna laughed, running her hands a scalp. "My inability to leave him alone is like, a lack of self control on my part. But every time he posts..." She flicked both sets of eyelids, making a rude gesture to the ceiling.

"Drink ours first, place the order for the office when we're ready to go? What would you like?" She joined the end of the line, leaning back to continue the conversation.

She nodded at Sarah's explanation. That made sense. "You have a name and a description? I know a lot of drell."

"Ehhh. Yes, we organize grants and so on, but there are organizations that are way more into 'cure' than we are? We're interested..." There was a but coming, a big one. "But why should anyone get fucking Kepral's syndrome? We know what causes it. But the primacy is obsessed with this kind of politeness that says wearing a breather is a knock on hanar hospitality, when they won't pay to refit the domes. A 'medical' solution doesn't scare anybody."

"Weird. When my brothers were that age they were in the middle of her songbird phase. You know, when they echo everything in that really tonal way and never sleep?"

"Hot tea, no sugar." She clasped her hands together and gave a nod after her conversation partner finished. "It really sounds like the Hanar are collective sticklers for social etiquette even if it means serious consequences. I have hope for the next generations, however, Kahje came within an inch of extinction just like everyone else. Facing down the gaping maw of death tends to change a person, hopefully the same can be said for a race." She leaned back and fished into her jacket, revealing a faded Space Bees shirt- and a credit chit. She slid it across the table to Kayana.

"I stole a great deal on my way out and officially, I've got more than enough money from .. Well, savings and personal items being pawned to cover this back. I know you may have reservations but I can't live with who I was. Each night is the same, another regret." She spoke quietly. "I have to do something more with my life. I've got to be someone my son can be proud of."

She washed her face with her hands .

"Kimon Fotis."

She shrugged, putting in the order-she ordered some triple-caramel insult to the coffee bean. "I'm not at my kindest when I'm freaked out...at the same time, they need to suck it up."

"I'm a bit of a hypocrite...there are things I'm never going to 'atone' for. And I can still do serious violence on people." She sat back with the drinks. "You know what I figured out this year, though? People like us are frigging everywhere."

"I don't know him personally, but I'll remember the name."

"The world is filled with people looking to atone." She lifted up her plastic cup of tea and took a sip. She sighed with relief. "I haven't had a decent warm tea since Chris and I split, she used to make it with cinnamon and honey." She took a small capsule from the center of the table near the other sweeteners and stirred it into her drink.

"Fuck- I'm sorry for rambling." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "So- Uh. What was living on Kahje like? I grew up on Bekenstein."

"...That wasn't rambling?" She raised an eyebrow, sipping her drink.

"I've never lived on Kahje. My dad fled the compact before I was born-on Omega, and I did most of my growing up on this wildcat independent drell colony. It's...behind a closed relay now."

"What was Bekenstein like?"

"It wasn't. People have been irritated because I'm constantly talking about my issues, so I've been trying to catch myself before I get too whiney." She smirked. "Anyway. Bekenstein- Bekenstein is nice, if you have money, and I did. I grew up in an affluental neighborhood in the Capital, and my neighbor was the CFO of one of the big shipping organizations before the war. Other neighbors were real estate magnates that had literally billions because of colony contracts, others were.. Well, on the further outskirts of the city those that didn't have money were there for work contracts. It was hard for them."

She leaned back and took another sip. "It was pretty boring most of the time. Lots of beautiful people, though." She shrugged.
"Fast cars, tall skyscrapers, almost limitless seas, catamaran parties, that sort of thing. It certainly had it's perks, but almost everybody had a black hole for an ego and more money than God."

"Our colony was still at the village stage. We were poor and gossipy and had nothing to distract ourselves from the gossip. But I was happy."

She sighed. "The war put everyone in the same boat, didn't it. Oh, my lost childhood home. You sucked, but I loved you..."

"Gossip is fun!" She rest her arms on the table and leaned on them slightly. "Super fun. You know Julian Snow, with LTD? I think he's got a hard shell but inside he's a softy who loves mountains and poetry and dogs." She leaned back. "I mean, no one can be that much of an hardass constantly, right?" She shrugged and took another drink from her tea, stirring it afterwards with a plastic stirrer.

"The apocalypse tends to do that. We're all the same now, equal in hopes and measures to attain them." She drummed her fingers on the sides of her cup. "Tell me, Kayana, what is it you do for fun around here? I mostly play the violin at my place and .. Well, I used to drink at bars."

"If you tire of gossip you have tired of life." She licked a bit of whipped cream off her lip. "I know him. He is actually a decent sentient being. However, he finds me completely insufferable."

"Is he your type at all?"

She laughed. "It's not that simple...I...I like to be very busy. I work for Krios Memorial. I'm taking classes towards my degree. And I volunteer at my temple, a lot, I help run the martial arts classes there. I go to bars but I'm trying to cut back on the alcohol."

"My type?" She spoke with emphasis. "No, no. He's too much of a jerk. My type usually is of the female variety, anyway." She shrugged. "I'- I mean, I was married to a woman, I dated her for some eight years before we separated. I'm not sure where to go from here, relationship-wise. My sister-in-law tried to set me up with a friend of hers, but I don't know if I'm going to see him again. He was the camera-guy that I was with at the Charity dinner, I don't know if you saw him but you probably saw the drone."

She cleared her throat. "You teach martial arts classes? I know martial arts! I love martial arts." She cracked her knuckles. "My previous employer had a style of it's own, a hybrid of the Systems Alliance personal defense system and ..well, others." She shrugged. "I was trained with that and it's done me well so far, I take it you're trained with another."

She shrugged. "Some people are more flexible than others. But everyone makes relationships too complicated. A relationship should make you feel better."

"If I said traditional drell forms, would you be surprised? My foster-mother signed me up, It probably saved my life."

"I'm very flexible." She couldn't help but smirk. "But- Relationships are supposed to make you feel better, however, they're still a lot of work. Chris had her parents, they didn't initially like me or the fact she wasn't dating some financial heir or something." She finished off her tea, then set the cup down. "It took a lot of work to win them over, but when I did, they adored me. They never knew about .. Well, what I did, until the last day I knew them."

She took a somber sigh and slowly stood. "You know what? I'm getting us some cake. There's got to be something sweet here."

"Two seconds." She vanished into the busy coffeehouse crowd and returned moments later with a large box of what appeared to be a Thessian crumb-cake, coated in white powdered sugar and served alongside a cup of melted dark chocolate. Sarah took a bite out of one and shook her head in disbelief. "I have got to eat out more."

"Anyway- Traditional drell arts? I've seen a Drell out-acrobat an opponent and bring him down with little more than a knee to the ribs and a wrist-lock."