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Who: Marian and Roy
Where: On the streets
When: midday

Marian was exhausted. She hadn't gotten proper sleep the night before because she'd gone to visit Alec before work and then she'd worked all night followed by part of the morning as well. The storms kept another one of the waitresses from getting into work. Of course Marian had been willing to stay later, needing the extra tips after the slow night and now she was finally walking home. She'd tried staying under awnings, tried to stay dry but between all the rain and the water that just seemed to sit on the sidewalk she was drenched and shivering, pausing for a moment under am another awning that was leaking enough that it was still misting on her.

Grady was out wandering around. He'd been back for a little while but was still getting used to not being shot at twenty four hours a day. Generally he liked waking around, though, it was nice. It was nice to see places that weren't half bombed out. It was nice to see people who weren't bandaged up or armed. Mostly? It was flat out nice to not be in the middle of a war zone, and therefore he took advantage of that fact and wandered (even if it was pissing down rain, he didn't care), reminding himself he was out of there. Even if part of him still wondered how everyone was doing, if others had pulled through, who had more stripes on their shoulders by now. He'd made it to Sergeant First Class himself, people flew up the ranks pretty quickly when you lost soliders all the goddamn time. Plus he'd been good at what he did. His dogtags clicked a little as he moved, a sound that was weirdly comforting to him.

As he walked, he slowed as he spotted someone familiar. Blinking a little, he reached up to swipe his sleeve over his eyes to clear them, to get his mop of hair that had grown back in out of his eyes. And when he confirmed the sighting, he hurried to catch up to her. "Marian--" he called just before he got there.

Marian only barely heard her name over the torrential downpour. Even though whomever was all calling was probably speaking loud enough for her to hear properly in normal weather, when the words finally got to her it wasn't more than a soft noise, only distinguishable as her name because hearing one's name tended to catch someone's attention no matter what. Turning she saw the familiar face, which was both hauntingly familiar and someone from a memory. She stared for a moment as he got closer, trying to focus on him properly and shake the odd feeling about him before the fact that her cousin, the one who'd been off to war, was coming up to her. "Roy?" she asked, louder than usual to be heard over the rain.

Man it had been a long ass time since someone had actually called him Roy. He was so used to everyone just barking 'Grady!' out at him that it was a little jarring to hear. But he still smiled at her, a sort of awkward expression, feeling weird on his face, but there. "Hey, I...how're you doing? And why don't you have an umbrella?" he asked, not that he had one. He kind of liked letting the rain fall down on him. But she looked like she might be catching her death.

For a long moment Marian just stared at him, shocked to see him standing there. When she could move again she stepped closer to him, an honest grin spreading across her features. "I...I don't know what I thought. That you were dead? When did you get back?" She reached for him, but just a hand on his arm. When they were younger she might have hugged him, but things were different now. Still, she looked happy to see him, very happy.

"I don't know, a while ago? I went back to the old house, but..." he trailed off. But it was a wreck at this point, and quite clear no one was living there. Not only was no one there but no one had been there in ages. So he'd left, realizing he probably didn't have a solid way to find any of his family. But here was Marian. He realized she didn't hug him, and he reached over with his other hand to squeeze lightly the one she'd put on his arm in place of it. He wasn't quite one who knew what to do with affection anymore either, so he didn't mind the missing sentiment of an embrace. "How're you doing? Where are you headed, can I walk you?" he asked.

At mention of the house, Marian's smile faltered. "No one's there," she said softly. She breathed a little easier when he squeezed her hand. It was good the expectation wasn't there. She wasn't the same girl he'd left behind. "I'm...I'm alright. I was headed home from work. It's this way," she nodded in the direction she'd been headed. "How was it? I know it's still going on, the war. But you're back. Is everything okay?"

He hung his head a little as they started walking, and he shoved his hands into his pockets, shrugging. "I was hit a few times." he admitted, going with that since he picked up on the fact that the house was a painful topic, and really he could understand that. It had looked like hell, he could imagine things had gotten worse after he left. He'd just wanted to take himself out of the equation--one less mouth to feed. "And it was...I dunno. I can't really describe it?" he said. "But...I got hurt. I'm not fit for duty anymore." he said, and there was definitely a note of sorrow in his tone.

"Hurt?" she asked, taking in his gait which was still normal, not like Alec's limp. "I'm sorry. Did you...was it like a family? The guys you were fighting with?" Alec felt that way, that his family was there, not here. She couldn't help but wonder if he'd been happier there than at home. He had left after all.

He slowed a little, and shrugged. "Kind of. It's...you'd have to be there. It's hard to explain." he said honestly. He didn't know how to describe it himself. The men he'd fought with were like brothers, but it was entirely different than the family he'd come from. "But I guess, that's the closest thing you could come to to describe it. So, yes?" he suggested, knowing he was tripping over his words. "They're people you're standing next to while being shot at. You'd die for them, they'd die for you. It's..." he shrugged, trailing off, and he didn't quite answer the question about being hurt, because he'd answered her other one.

Marian nodded. It was the same way that Alec spoke of his time on the front line. "We were the same way, for a little while at least." And then it was too much and the whole family scattered. Even Marian wasn't sure where everyone had scattered too. "How did you get hurt?" she asked, not wanting to think about what had happened to their family since he left.

"I was shot a few times. There was some shrapnel too." he explained, not sure how much detail she wanted. If she wanted to know he'd been shot in the chest or not, if she wanted to see the scar there, or the others on his person. "I pulled through, obivously, but I can't be there anymore. I sort of...the docs told me that I could kind of go at any time." he admitted.

She found herself slowing, arms wrapped around herself at that. He'd been shot a few times. Which was more than once, possibly even more than twice. It was horrifying. Thinking her cousin had died overseas in the war was one thing, but to hear he'd endured something like that and lived through it? It gave her chills. "You could go at any time? What does that mean?" she asked, concern in her voice. He'd just come back and now they'd lose him all over again?

He shrugged again. "I don't know exactly? They threw a lot of medical talk at me and I don't know what it all meant. I guess, it's there's still some shrapnel in me." he said. "And it's close to important things, they can't take it out, and if it gets dislodged or something..." he trailed off, hoping that explanation would cut it for her. He really didn't know all the technical terminology for everything. He'd been a little past the stage of retaining information when he'd heard 'you're going home' and had been dealing with that at the time. So everything after that was a little blurry for him.

Marian's eyes were wide, despite the fact that her damp hair was still hanging in her face. That sounded horrible even if she didn't understand it at all. Having shrapnel stuck inside her cousin didn't sound like something anyone would want. Especially if it could still kill him. "I...that's horrible," she managed to stammer out, reaching for him again but not quite touching him. The effort was there though, even if she didn't make contact. "What do you do?"

"I'm alive for now." he pointed out, giving a little half smile. "That's a good thing, right? I didn't die over there. And part of me wishes I could still be there with everyone, but I'd just be a liability. If anything happened, I'd just be another man down that they needed, they need capable people. I've been told I'm not really allowed to do anything rough. Being in the middle of a battle is considered rough." he said. "What do I do? ...not sure yet." he said, being totally honest. "I haven't figured out what to do. So if you've got suggestions, I'm all ears." he added, happy to take any advice she might give him.

When he asked for her advice, Marian couldn't help but color a little. "I'm not sure I have anything brilliant suggestion wise. Something not rough I suppose," she said with a small smile and a shrug. "My life amounts to working at Nighthawk's diner whenever they let me. Which definitely isn't rough if you're desperate." There was a touch of a tease there, but only a touch. If it wasn't true it'd be easier to laugh at.

"How's it pay?" he asked, though less because he was desperate for money, and more because he wanted to know how she was doing financially. After all, he did have his own money just kind of sitting there because he still wasn't even sure how to live life with it. They'd never really been well off, their families, they'd all lived together, and then...well. There had been a reason he'd headed off into the service. He'd been one less mouth to feed. And he'd signed up with the Airborne because it paid more than anything else. Sure, it was kind of insane, and he didn't actually think he'd ever stop having nightmares about his time in the air, after he'd jumped, when bullets were flying everywhere, and there was literally nothing he could do but float down towards a warzone that was already hot. Planes were falling out of the sky, and men were getting shot before they ever hit the ground. And all he could do was listen to the gunfire, the noise from the engines up above...

There was a few minutes there where he spaced out and didn't realize it. And he had to blink and shake his head a little to clear it and he re-focused on Marian, hoping he hadn't missed her answer to what he'd asked. Though it took him a second to remember what he'd asked in the first place.

"Only barely," she said shrugging. He knew how it had been, how far from well off they'd been. With Roy it wasn't worth lying about how poor she was. "I survive though." Marian glanced over at her cousin who seemed to have stared off at nothing. That left her looking a little puzzled until he seemed to come back to their conversation again. "Are you alright?"

He gave a little half smile but it was slightly off. "Yeah, I'm okay." he said. "I just kind of get lost in my own thoughts sometimes." he admitted, which wasn't quite the truth. More like he got trapped in them. Or he did these days, anyway. He didn't think he had before he left the front lines. "But you're doing okay?" he asked, getting back to her. "Do you need anything? Does anyone need anything?"

For a moment she looked like she didn't believe him, but eventually she nodded. When he asked if she was okay, it made her almost certain she hadn't heard him. "I'm surviving," she repeated as she led them around another corner. "I'm guessing they all need something. The whole family is scattered around town." Marian had a sinking feeling that Roy had no idea what was actually going on and the magnitude of just how bad it got.

"Scattered around...where?" he asked. He really had missed where a lot of the badness happened, he'd taken himself out of the equation before then. When things were bad but hadn't quite crumbled entirely yet. "Is there a new house? I...no one ever wrote to me." he admitted, reaching up to drag his fingers through his hair to get it out of his eyes.

Marian slowed her steps a little, looking at Roy curiously. "Everywhere," she said softly. "I..." She looked around her, obviously not in the best part of town where her boarding house was. "There isn't a new house. I live here," she pointed down the street to her building. "My brother lives in an old bank vault at the old bank. There are some other cousins scattered about, I don't even know where all of them are." She didn't say why she didn't write him because she didn't want to hurt him. She'd been envious and upset with him for leaving and then when everything did finally implode, there wasn't enough money to spare on a stamp.

He didn't actually ask her why she hadn't written. He wasn't about to guilt trip anyone, he'd only brought it up in the first place because he wanted her to know that whatever had gone on here, he didn't know about any of it. There'd been no word, so he was clueless. When he followed what she was saying, though, he looked at the ground. "I'd sort of thought things might work out when I was gone." he said. "I figured one less person around to feed and clothe and house and everything would help. I tried sending money home once, but the letter came back, so I guess that's why." he said.

She couldn't look at him, not then. "It was one less person to feed, but it was also one less person to help. People got sick and...It just got worse." Marian rubbed her face a little, trying to wipe away the rain there. "It got really bad. Really, really bad."

He was quiet for a long moment there. "I'm sorry." he said. "I didn't know." He'd had good intentions. Apparently they just didn't actually add up to much. "Do you...should I leave you alone?" he asked, unsure what course of action to take.

Marian watched his face. She knew he'd only meant to help, he'd only ever meant to help. "No, no Roy," she said shaking her head. Her brother had just lectured her on that, on not being there for someone when they needed her and now she wasn't going to let herself fall into that same trap all over again. "I'm glad you're back. And safe." She reached for his arm again, this time actually touching it.

He looked up and searched her eyes for a long moment, like he wanted to be sure she meant it. Because for him, he really didn't want to intrude on things if he wasn't welcome, and if he wasn't there for the family's worst times, well. It wasn't like he couldn't understand how there might be some hurt feelings there, or outright bitterness. But she looked sincere enough. So he gave the ghost of a smile, and then a brief little hug. "Me too. I...guess I know where you live now, so I'll stop by sometime?" he suggested. "I'm staying at the sunny shores...kind of til I figure out what the hell I'm doing with my life now."

When he hugged her, no matter how brief, Marian felt herself stiffen a little. It was her cousin, someone she'd trusted outright when she was young, but things were different now. She was different now. "I'm working at Nighthawks too. If I'm not here, I'm there," she told him. "Do stop by. I'll look forward to it." She was honest about that again, trying to get over her own issues to do what she'd failed to do for her brother.

He wasn't sure how to take that. The very clear twitch she gave when he hugged her no matter how brief, then followed up by the invitation to stop by and that she'd look forward to it. They seemed to be conflicting sentiments at best, and he wasn't sure at all which to follow. He supposed he'd not figure it out until he found himself in a position to do so again. Then he'd see how he felt about it. She could just be being nice, not wanting to blow him off after just seeing he was back and not dead. "Okay. It was nice seeing you, Marian." he said, genuine on his end, even if he was hesitant over the meaning of things on hers.

Marian smiled brightly, despite the rain and the circumstances. "You too, Roy. I'm glad you're back, and safe," she told him. For a short moment she lingered, the smile still on her features as she took him in, convincing herself that he was there and safe. Then she turned and headed back towards her building.