It had been one hell of a week. Or day. By the time she finally found a moment to sit down, Besca could hardly tell. For the past few days she’d survived off of a combination of coffee and micro-naps, and while that had done a number on her blood pressure and mental acuity, it had at least kept her going. Today though, the worry had kept her eyes open and her stomach paradoxically empty and without an appetite. 

She had been saying Quinn’s name all day to people who only cared about how it looked on a document. No one had asked what she was doing, [i]how[/i] she was doing—beyond one asshole prodding about why they didn’t have her client-side medical update yet, and indignantly huffing when Besca explained they couldn’t shove her into the doctor’s office first thing.

Talking with her own Board about pilots was always a grating exercise in retaining her humanity, but hearing this conference call of diplomats and think-tank’s discuss them like spare parts for a car was infuriating. What worked, what didn’t, what needed tuning, what needed replacing. More than once she heard nameless, faceless accountants and lawyers and theorymen bemoan a pilot’s poor performance, and suggest in the most abstract and legalese way that they be replaced as soon as possible. 

Toussaint, for his part, vehemently shut down any suggestions towards pruning his own team. Eyes turned instead to the lesser cogs in the Savior Corps machine, the technicians, the low-ranking officials. People who could be removed without fuss. Besca was disheartened by how little she cared by then. 

Now it was midnight, and she had another call in…soon. She didn’t know—someone would alert her. Her dinner, a microwaved bowl of pasta, was now cold and mostly untouched as she sat at her desk, head in her hands, and prayed that a vessel in her brain would suddenly pop and bring the nightmare to an end. 

Then, her phone rang. 

It had been a while since she’d had to quick-draw, she wasn’t sure how good her reflexes still were. But she had that phone up to her ear before the first ring had finished.

“[color=gray]Quinn?[/color]” she said, or would have, but there was sobbing in her ears immediately, and the word withered in her throat. She didn’t understand what Quinn meant, but she rarely did in times like this. When she was upset, sometimes she didn’t make much sense, and it was more a task of dissecting the [i]feeling[/i] in her words than the words themselves. 

Not a particularly difficult task, to be fair. Besca figured Quinn was feeling thereabouts exactly what she was, with an extra dash of homesickness, and a different kind of loneliness. 

“[color=gray]I’m here, hun’,[/color]” she said, winding the frayed nerves up tight. “[color=gray]Breathe, okay? Breathe for me. Just like we practiced.[/color]” she took a deep, exaggerated breath to demonstrate. “[color=gray]You’re okay. Everything’s okay. Toussaint tells me the day’s over—you did it. You made it.[/color]”