From above, the city looked spectacular.
The sun gleamed off the windows of countless buildings as though their facades were myriads of mirrors, visible from miles away into the desert; it was a blinding brightness that did not recede till the coming of nightfall, now reflecting the cornflower blue sky like a perfect canvas. A city of glass and steel amid a scorched wasteland, it glinted in the sands like a handful of carelessly scattered diamonds with its skyscrapers and spires climbing up. And a view like this was a privilege of the rich, the powerful and the extraordinarily fortunate.
The poor masses never saw Solarta as the desert rose it was.
That realization, borne of impatience and worry, really only hit him when he stood there and looked upon the city from one of those mirror-like windows, illuminated by fierce sunlight; he'd already gotten used to it so well that it felt like second nature to look below, and only stare up to watch the color of the sky change at dusk. It was hard to see the stars through the dome, anyway.
And it brought him no relief whatsoever, because the concern and uncertainty still lingered at the bottom of his stomach like a leaden weight.
He turned away from the window. The sun was burning his eyes even through two different layers of glass.
In some ways, perhaps it was better to be left waiting. He had the time to collect his spirits and calm down, a certain sort of mental preparations to be done in silent solitude as he paced around the couch and table, and to come to terms with anything that would follow - get ready for the worst, even. But he didn't like the dead, suffocating silence interrupted only by his footsteps and the brushing of fabric against fabric; it was disconcerting and unnerving, ragging his already slight patience raw.
Truth be told, Sieg just wanted the shitstorm to be over with, to rip the damn button up off and disappear in his apartment again.
But he made a mistake. There was no laundry service for fuck-ups to iron it out instead of him.
He had to do this on his own. Every thing of importance you had to do alone; there was no one on he whole wide ruined earth to help you carry the burden no matter the circumstances, no shoulder to share the weight when you feel like it's getting too heavy. And he was a pilot, for fuck sake!
No point in regretting. No point in wishing to change the past.
The only thing that he could do was to face the future head on, grind his heels in, and go forwards like a rodeo bull against a red sheet.
He tugged the leather jacket thrown over his shoulder tentatively; he wasn't really feeling like a bull for a change. Suspended for dropping acid, demolishing a bathroom and burning his hand and currently waiting for the PR's verdict of his punishment, that didn't exactly give a man tons of confidence or so to speak.
He'd already heard what he should've from Yavul, but it wasn't really his commander he feared; the new PR officer they got was a tougher cookie, especially since he had yet to see the guy and get to know him by more than hearsay. Sure enough, he did the best he could've to at least leave a good impression - a stark white shirt, though he felt that if he twitches or tenses a single muscle the seams will come apart in another public fiasco, newly cut and neatly brushed hair softly framing his face, even polished shoes, and all that just to ease his own sentence for this misstep.
And he was still waiting.
How long had he been waiting, anyway?
It felt like hours. With a deep sigh, he paced to the other wall again, staring at the carpet beneath his feet and the white of bandages mercifully covering the burns on his hand. The wait had gone beyond mental preparation and turned the time into dripping tar, a slow countdown about to suffocate him.
Yet, despite it all, when the long-expected call to enter came, he felt no relief whatsoever; he straightened his back out and squared up his shoulders, preparing to enter with his head high and all the charisma necessarily involved in his station. And thus he did, carrying himself with familiar and practiced confidence even if he didn't feel it at all and even if he had the dry and dull expression of a man that doesn't like his circumstances one bit.
He strode through the doorway, sliding the jacket off his shoulders and throwing it over his arm. The leather bent smoothly.
He was what he was. He did what he did. And he was here to fix it, the past be damned.
"Morning."