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WHO: Those who have been invited & anyone who would have a reason to visit Maurtia Falls #010! Wondering if you fit into that category? Just contact anyone with an involved character (Andy; Rex; Martin; Cassandra Igarashi; Dio; Archie) and ask!
WHERE: Maurtia Falls #010
WHEN: TONIGHT? TONIGHT.
WHAT: The soldierfam has decided that regular group dinners are good for Martin, and this time they've got a few party crashers!
WARNINGS: None anticipated; will change if necessary!

At a glance, one could easily mistake Maurtia Falls #010 for being entirely uninhabited. Dio rarely returns home and Rex and Marty only have a handful of belongings between the two of them and Rex is meticulously tidy, returning everything to exactly where it ought to be - if anything, it's Andy who makes the biggest mess around the place, and she doesn't even live here.

Despite every sign to the contrary, however, they do live here, and it winds up being a hub of activity whenever one of Martin's guardians - if that's truly what they can call themselves - decides that it's about time to get everyone together for dinner. In Anderson's absence, Rex has taken on the opinion that cooking can't be that hard, which is how they wind up with one window open, a casserole dish burned black soaking in the sink and an assortment of take-out on the table.

(As it turns out, it is that hard - and he found a combination pizza & Chinese food take-out place, whiich means that it can only be better.)

In all, there's not much to do or see here; there's food, Rex the goldfish in his tank, a soccer ball neatly tucked close to the house in the backyard, and a mysterious shelf called "Martin's Things" in the cupboard. Otherwise, you're stuck with nothing more than some potential awkward conversation. Have fun, kids!

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"Maybe I should stop. I keep on seeing bits of yarn around, and I know that's not Martin's doing," Rex returns, a quirk to his lip. It's nice to see, really, even though he likes to keep the place immaculate; having a sign of life, knowing that both Martin's getting visitors and Andy's still with them is nice. Knowing exactly where Andy's from has been surreal to say the least, but it does give him some much-needed context to try to understand her too.

Which means that if she's getting into knitting, she should by all means pursue it. Rex just knows that he can't do it, not after his continuous struggles with a tie. "We're glad to have you here. Hell, I'm glad to have you here. Can't always just be me and the kid hanging around here."

He adores Martin, he really does, but there's something to be said for adult companionship. And for all of their differences, there's always been an easy sort of companionship between Andy and Rex, the sort of unspoken bond that exists between people who've peddled in violence for most of their lives, no matter how long those lives have been.

"Maybe you should stop," she quips back lightly, "But then you'd never get back all the shit I've borrowed."

For instance, that familiar gray shirt she's wearing under her flannel tonight — loose, and definitely not hers. A souvenir from the last time she got into a bar fight — ended up a mess and had no where better to go afterward than Martin and Rex's house. Poor kid had loaned the thing to her, then spent a while plucking splinters and glass shards from her hair. She'd never gotten around to giving it back. Maybe on purpose. A lot of her own shirts have all kinds of blood stains and bullet holes. Wearing Rex's neatly kept shirt is practically dressing up by Andy's standards.

It's nice to have that kind of relationship with people. She doesn't take it for granted, even if it seems like she does. It means something to her that they welcome her in their home, even though she takes things like they're hers and leaves bits of yarn everywhere.

"Like you could ever really be rid of me anyway," she goes on after a beat. There's something warm and familiar in her wryness. "You suckers are stuck with me now."

Rex snorts. "It certainly seems that way."

He's not sure how they wound up this way but he's glad for it. Anderson had been the first person he'd ever been able to look at and call a friend and truly mean it. It's not that he has any lack of love in his life - he loves his brothers, fiercely and without reserve, he loves his Jedi with the exact sort of undying loyalty they deserve - but never a friend. To have one had been unheard of. To have found a second is almost more shocking than the first.

He's glad for it, though. It's nice. Nice enough that sometimes he has to pause and remind himself that it's something he's allowed to have here in this strange place, stuck in some odd sort of stasis, that it's not taking away from some bigger duty. He's still learning more about it, though, about what friends actually do, how they speak to each other.

He never got the impression that it ended in wardrobe theft. He arches a brow. "And stuck with losing pieces of our wardrobe as well, I see. You're wearing it wrong."

Andy, he irons his shirts for a reason.

Andy is, admittedly, not a paragon of friendship. She is, in fact, a terrible example of what a traditional friendship might be like, and a terrible example of a human being in general. For one thing, she has absolutely assimilated his meticulously kept shirt into her garbage wardrobe and probably didn't even wash it before wearing it to dinner tonight. Maybe her fierce loyalty compensates for that — but that might depend on how much more of his closet she commandeers for herself.

At Rex's comment, she glances down at herself, pulling the shirt out a bit to look at it as if she isn't fully sure what he means. Okay, so it's a little wrinkly. Or a lot. The flannel mostly hides it, so it's fine, right? Besides, it's not like she's going for the whole functional adult look.

"Is there a wrong way to wear this thing?" she responds skeptically, glancing at Rex. "Or are you just giving me a hard time? Because I can take it off and give it back right now if you want, big guy."

"Both. It's wrinkled. And it's crooked."

And, admittedly, it's been bothering Rex all night. She's not one of his subordinates, so he can't exactly send her back into the barracks to make herself look presentable but, with a long suffering stare, he can reach out to tug at it until the neckline is at least approximately where it should be on her smaller frame. After a moment, he gives into temptation and fixes her collar as well.

It's an improvement. Not a big improvement, but an improvement. Now Andy's at least 25% on her way to being halfway presentable. Rex's armour is always scuffed up, something he wears as a badge of honour, and he's used to sleeping in the dirt and the muck, used to weeks without a sonic and being covered in blood and grime and dust, used to the ways it creeps through all the cracks in his armour and the way things get so filthy that you can't just scrub it off. That doesn't mean that when he has a choice in the matter he doesn't want things to look sharp. In a place like this, there's really no excuse.

"Now, do you care to tell me why you're wearing my shirt? It can't be for the look of it."

Andy, for her part, relents to these small adjustments. She holds still, only tilting her head away to take another pull off her cigarette, exhaling the smoke to the side while Rex makes her slightly more presentable. It's true that there isn't really much excuse for her to look the way she does — it's just her own apathy, this idea that after all the time she's lived, what she wears is of little consequence. Besides, with all the fights she gets in, it's a wonder she has any clothes of her own that are still fully intact.

Maybe Rex will rub off on her a little bit. Maybe next time, she'll wear something that's been ironed. Or actually belongs to her.

"Why not? Maybe I'm into the whole off-duty soldier aesthetic," she responds with lazy dryness. "Martin loaned it to me after my other shirt got ripped in a bar fight. It was reasonably clean. So. I wore it."

Rex looks at Andy, then looks down at himself. They couldn't look more different. Andy's flannel looks practically colourful in comparison to what Rex is wearing, but while she's disheveled, Rex's drab clothing is meticulously kept without a wrinkle or a stain in sight, everything in its right place.

"In case you've forgotten, we're both off-duty soldiers," he points out. And, in his humble opinion, he's the one who looks like an off-duty soldier. They're supposed to be tidy. It's in their DNA.

Well. Not in Andy's, he supposes.

"Must have been some barfight. On or off the job?"

Rex absolutely looks the part. Not just in the way he dresses, but in his demeanor, in the way he presents himself, and in the way he speaks — not like Andy, who hasn't had cause to show just how disciplined she actually can be since arriving in this universe. It would be different, if she were running some covert mission in a dessert somewhere. It would be different if her team was here, looking to her leadership. But bereft of those things, she's just... This. Wrinkled shirts and dirty combat boots. A dwindling cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth.

"On. At least up until the minute I got fired," she responds with a deceptively nonchalant shrug. "It wasn't a good fight. And holding back did nothing but cost me a good shirt, so." She flicks her cigarette to the ground, putting it out under her shoe. "Anyway, it's not like I killed them."

What she won't say explicitly is that this means the issue of her freelancing is more pressing now than it was before. Not that she couldn't find another normal job — but this is the perfect excuse.

Rex probably should have seen this coming. After their little talk, it became clear that Andy wouldn't hold down that job of hers for much longer - there's choosing to pursue an alternative path, and there's staying in a dull, dead-end job in which you're desperately overqualified and in which you're surrounded by little more than surly drunks. Rex wishes he had some idea as to where she would belong, but he knows nothing of the world outside of being a soldier. Half the reason he signed up to be a police officer is that they're trained to uphold the law too, that it's as similar a job as he could muster.

He doesn't say any of it out loud. He's not in the habit of voicing his every thought, particularly when he's doubtful of the good they'll do.

"What'd they do to get your temper up?"

"They were rowdy and drunk. And I got tired of pulling my punches."

As if she isn't capable of consummate control, when she needs to be. No, some part of her chose to let loose a little — even knowing it'd be the last straw for her employer. Nevermind that she didn't instigate it, she escalated it. And maybe that's less because of how rowdy the drunks were and more because she's a master of habitual self-sabotage, particularly when she's bored and restless. Maybe it wasn't entirely on purpose, but some choice was definitely made.

The path she's chosen will only cause conflict. She must be aware of that, deep down.

"Listen, Rex — it's not a big deal."

"More like you got tired of the job."

Losing control isn't something that just happens without having something serious instigate it. Hell, for a man like Rex, losing control isn't something that happens at all. When you move from detaining someone to really hurting them, that's not an accident - that's a choice, and a choice you make willingly. It's not one that surprises him, but there's no point in calling it anything other than what it is.

They've talked about what comes next. Andy knows that if she pursues a path that goes opposite to Rex's and that if they're positioned against each other, he will do his duty. What more is there to say? It's not as though he doesn't understand. Knowing the cost of war, Rex would like to say he never enjoys it, but he does. In his own way, he misses it. No amount of writing parking tickets can make up for that.

"You decided on handing in your notice of resignation your own way."

He would call her out like this. That's what she gets for letting him know her as well as he does. But he's not wrong either — and it isn't unfair of him to say. She just doesn't want to argue. Not with Rex. No matter how contrary and difficult a person Andy can be, she respects him. More than that, she actually likes the man.

She exhales, half-wishing she hadn't put out her cigarette.

"I'm going to weigh my options a while." As if she hadn't already scouted out her target for initiation into the Dark Brotherhood. The guy isn't dead yet, but he could be. Easily. With her skill set, she wouldn't even break a sweat. "So you don't have to break out the handcuffs just yet."

"Well, you've got time. Especially if you're Registered."

Even without that extra income, she's still got time. Andy's over often enough to know that if she had to come here for meals, he and Martin would accept it without question. Hell, she could practically move her things in and the two of them likely wouldn't bat an eye. She's become something of a permanent fixture here and he and Martin seem to both be used to more communal lodgings than what they've gotten here, a home that's practically all to themselves seeing as Dio only seems to be around once a week.

Money's not the real problem, though, and he knows it. It's about how you spend the long hours of the day. Rex hadn't known how long days could be until he found himself tasked with enough idle time to wonder how the hell he's going to fill them. "You'd make a damn good officer, you know."

Andy glances up with slight upward curve of her mouth, just there at the corner of her lips and wry as ever. She isn't sure if she does know that — surely she could be a good officer, but would she? Would she make herself work inside the law instead of bending it to suit herself? Would she restrain herself enough to trust in the system instead of her own justice? Maybe for a while, if only to try and validate the high opinion her friend has in her. But there'd always be that chance — that one day, she'd go rogue, do things her own way.

Maybe that's why she won't — because she knows herself, and because she doesn't think she could commit to something where she knows she'll disappoint Rex. Stupid fucking sentimentality.

"It's sweet that you think so," she finally answers with a sigh, "But you know it'd drive you crazy, seeing me show up in a wrinkled uniform every day." A light joke, tired at the edges. "Besides, you really want to risk being trapped in a squad car with me?"

"Trust me, you'd be preferable to some of the shebs I've been saddled with. At least your heart's more or less in the right place."

They are, technically speaking, Rex's superiors and go to great pains to both remind him of the fact and attempt to torment him enough through casual cruelty to hammer the point in. Rex does things by the book and, as he's quickly learning, the MFPD does not. He doesn't much care. He'll do the job in front of him, and that's that. Andy wouldn't have as great a respect for the rules as Rex does, but she'd do the right thing. He's confident in that.

On the other hand, she may beat up a fellow officer.

(On the other hand, she would definitely beat up a fellow officer.)

"It's an option. I'm afraid I'm not much help for exploring any other options." After all, Rex hasn't got the faintest clue what is most people do all day. He just went straight for what worked best for him and ignored the rest.

She would absolutely beat up a fellow officer. Honestly, some day she should probably deal with the fact that her solution to at least half of her problems is to beat somebody up. Cathartic? Yes. Productive? Maybe not so much. And definitely not conducive to keeping her job. But it's funny how she dwells on the idea a little anyway — becoming a cop, striving to be a better version of herself. Being with her old teammates used to inspire that kind of thinking too.

Where her heart truly is might be up for debate, but sometimes she'd like for it to be in the right place. Even if she'd never say that out loud.

"I really will think about it," she responds at length, shoving her hands into her pockets and deflecting with a little wryness, "If only because I probably would be way fucking better than whoever you've got now."

"You're right about that one. The two of us would make quite a team."

It would be nice. Normal. Fighting alongside someone he knows he can trust, someone who will listen to him and who he thinks is worth listening to in return, someone who will have his back in a pinch and wouldn't go around breaking the rules for personal gain and personal gain alone. Andy doesn't strike him as the sort to take petty bribes, to look the other way when others are suffering out of sheer greed.

He doesn't think she'll join up, though, not really. Following protocol isn't her style. But it's a nice thought.

"At the very least, we'd scare the piss out of anyone we'd be tasked with going after."

Andy could probably do that alone. Sometimes she just does this... thing with her face. It's quite impresssive.

They would make a great team. Even Andy can't deny that. Maybe a little bit of that good cop, bad cop business. And she has missed working with someone she trusts at her back. That's been the hardest part of all this — being away from her team, people she's fought and killed with for centuries. People that knew her every step, her every heartbeat. People she could rely on in a tough spot.

But there's still the Dark Brotherhood. Work sublimely suited to her skills. She wouldn't have to involve anyone else. She could be the perfect lone wolf assassin. And it would be her perfect excuse to distance herself from the people here that she loves most.

"I do have an amazing resting bitch face," she replies at length, keeping her thoughts to herself. "You'd have to keep me in line though. And show me the ropes. Don't you think you do enough baby-sitting?"

Working the beat is a far cry from covert ops in the Middle East. More people watching. Rules that actually have to be followed. And isn't fair of her to even joke about Rex having any responsibility for her actions at all, but she knows herself. Without that balancing force, it could be a disaster that starts with "police" and ends in "brutality."

Rex leans against the front of the house, one foot propped up over his ankle, arms crossed, by all rights looking more relaxed than he usually does. He's still a stiff man by nature and tends to move as such, as though living in his own personal panoptican, as though if he doesn't stand perfectly at attention he'll be noticed.

Slowly but surely, he's loosening up, inch by inch. Learning that nothing bad will happen if he lets down his guard isn't something that comes to him naturally, but he's learning. Here, at least, he's relatively safe from judgment - unless you're counting Andy's judgment, and considering the rumpled state of the woman, he's in good company.

"My current partner is a man who thinks my name is Rick, believes my skills to be specifically suited to collecting parking tickets, and flees at the first sign of taking responsibility." He snorts. "He's the third one I've gone through and, I'm afraid, the best of the bunch. If I'm keeping someone in line, it may as well be someone I like."

It isn't that she doesn't sympathize. The two of them have yet to see actual conflict together — barring that one time with the drunk, which hardly counts — but she understands him to be a capable man and a good soldier. It doesn't take much to see that the work he's doing now is beneath his skills.

Maybe it's pride that keeps her from making this choice. Because for all her bullshit, Andy knows there isn't a cop in this city — or anywhere — that could take her. Or maybe she just wants to avoid committing to anything where she's responsible to make good choices. Because she doesn't want to face that feeling of disappointing anyone that matters. But.

"...Fuck it. And fuck him," she responds irreverently. "Go through that one too, and put in a good word for me. I'll... Figure out the fucking paperwork, or whatever."

"Really?"

For once, Andy's broken through Rex's unflappable exterior. He raises his brows, looking genuinely surprised for a moment - and hell, he is. He'd thought that Andy was hell-bent on going through less than legitimate avenues or work that was beneath her, had halfway resigned himself to the idea. To have her seriously consider joining up with what Rex considers to be worthy work, dubious co-workers or not, is pleasantly unexpected.

He can't blame her for getting through life the way that she needs to get through it. Rex has been alive for what has felt like twelve very long years and is already underneath the impression that life feels like something that's terribly, terribly long. But hell, maybe even people who have lived as long as Andy can be turned onto a path a little more positive, given the proper motivation.

He rubs at his chin, callouses rasping against his stubble, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I can get behind that. Though I have to warn you: I'm not sure what my word is worth. I'm already starting to get something of a reputation. Think you can handle being lumped in with the problem officer?"

Inexplicably, his visible surprise makes her feel a twinge self-conscious — a fact she disguises by glancing away and shrugging a little, like it's no big deal. Like they hadn't debated this, and like she hadn't outright said she'd rather go around killing people for a living. Whether it's worthy work or not, she doesn't really know. It will be frustrating. She'll probably punch at least one (1) coworker. But she'll try. She'll try to be good.

"Well, I hope you're ready to be downright fucking notorious, because having me for a partner is not going to help with the whole 'problem officer' thing," she responds with her usual wryness. "Unless I do such a shit job it makes you look shiny by comparison."

Rex lets out a bark of laughter. "Shiny, eh? It's been quite some time since I've been called that. No, I've earned my stripes - and my reputation. Can't say this is how I wanted to earn it back, but it's high time that I did."

Rex may seem stoic and straitlaced here, but he can't deny that his audaciousness, tendency to charge onto the battlefield and eagerness to improvise in combat situations have earned him his own sort of reputation, just reined in enough to be an efficient soldier and officer, but he'd gone Jango a long time ago.

If he didn't like that sort of reputation, he wouldn't wear his jaig eyes on his forehead. He's got enough of an ego to feel a twinge of pride whenever he and the 501st are recognized. They're gearing for a different sort of recognition here, but recognition nonetheless. He'll take it.

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