I'm good at shooting people, cracking wise, and pretending to know how to fight.

For months, the Temple had been-- outside of Atton's usual rounds. He had wanted to put some distance between himself and that place, between himself and everything that it meant for him, his life, his place in the world. Mical had remained an occasional voice on the comm, left on read more out of habit than the genuine resentment that had once colored their friendship– he could call it that now– for so many years.

Yet now a little piece of the Temple had come here. Sitting in one of the comically-large chairs in Atton's hotel room, that genuine earnest interest in his eyes that had always wound Atton up something rotten. And yet: with the first sign of crow’s feet at the edges of his eyes, the weight of the position of Grand Master resting visibly on his shoulders.

Was it the first sign? Or had two years of therapy finally scrubbed some of the scales from Atton's eyes?

He felt tired, as he often felt tired, as he had started to feel tired more and more often even before everything blew up on him and left him spinning in the wind.

Nowadays, he knew where the tired came from. That had changed much.

( We miss you at the Temple, Mical said, tempting his sarcasm. )

It really was funny. Atton had always thought of himself as an observant guy, and yet for years he’d put everything that he didn’t really want to know over there, in that pile, so at least he wouldn’t have to deal with it. All those details about himself, about the few friends he had, and even about Mical, who had almost single-handedly carried the rebirth of the Order on his back for so long.

He’d been giving it all space, lately. To breathe, to settle, to be dealt with, if it wasn't too late, if they could still be dealt with. And this once, he gave that same space to his old rival, as they walked quietly into the night; two men far too old for the faces they carried, one in black and one in tan, wrapped in the tattered remains of Meetra Surik’s strange, broken legacy.

[[ establishy. TW for talk of various mental health issues related to trauma under the cut ]]