M [Fallen Shrine] Body's, Body's everywhere, and it's hard to tell who's who.

Sophia sighed as she stood to one side of the vastly overcrowded interior of the elevator, looking at the rest of her crew who had decided they were going to come with her to tell Drake's mother that they had his body for funeral services if she wanted. It still stung badly to think about him being dead. Yet another person killed under her leadership. Fuck, maybe she should just give the ship to one of the others so she wasn't the one in charge anymore. Her luck seemed intent on killing those who followed her command after all. She'd already had the long, drawn out argument about why she was the only one who needed to come, since she figured she'd be bringing Kayla back to the Fallen Shrine to retrieve the body sitting in the pantry, zipped up in a emotionless and generic body-bag right now. Olyv at least made sense making this trip. Thankfully the neko twins were busy taking teh time they had now on a friendly landing pad to fix what they couldn't during the ship's flight after the very unfriendly pad they'd been on last.

"Catelynn, you still planning on hitting up that Q-Tech specialist after all this, right?" Soap asked, trying to look at the big-tiddied Assimar through the crowd of people.

Cate grunted as she stared forward, puffy eyed, bloodshot, and baggy underneath it. "Really think this is the best time to ask?" That question was asked hollowly and hoarsely- the Aasimar clearly hadn't been speaking much. She blinked, and looked down at her datapad, before typing down a few things on it idly. She suddenly snapped at Ferrol: "Now is not the time, Ferrol. Come here!" The robot scuttled back to the white haired woman- Ferrol knew Cate well enough to know that Cate was not in the mood.

"I've postponed it until tomorrow. I'm having to fucking break the worst news to someone, and I don't think I can be in a rational thought after that. So, no. I'm not meeting him today." Cate's fist clenched after typing some more on her pad, and her lip twitched, tightness clearly on her jaws. She didn't bother looking at Soap- based on her obstinate refusal to look at anyone else, she was trying not to explode.

Sarah seemed to be the most calm of anyone in the cramped lift, a cellular device in hand, messaging back and forth with someone. She had done her best to sort of stay out of conversations around the matter at their feet, feeling it wasn't much her place, or how to broach what exactly she knew might be a possibility with the situation. The raven haired woman was currently messaging back and forth with the woman they were coming to visit, well sort of, it was mostly Orias she could tell on the other end. [*She seems rather busy with something in the bedroom, so I haven't intruded. You say the whole crew is coming to visit almost? Is a certain fennec included?*], was the most recent reply, the demoness unaware of what her wife was currently up to. For some reason, that gave the older woman a very... not quite unsettling, but maybe a bit tense of a feeling.

Either this all would be a mess, a fight, both, or a just straight sob fest. Considering Kayla's absence from answering the phone however, the somber feeling of something unexpected, couldn't quite be shaken off either.

Olyv stood in the far corner of the lift, shoulder pressed against the cold wall, arms folded tight across her chest like she could physically hold herself together. The chatter in the cramped space came in pieces....Soap’s tone too casual for the moment, Cate’s voice like broken glass, Sarah keeping herself tucked in the quiet. She didn’t look at Cate, but she saw her anyway. Puffy eyes. Jaw working like she was chewing through something she couldn’t swallow.

Olyv had seen grief in all its shapes..silent, screaming, hollowed out...but on Cate it sat like a storm behind glass. She didn’t blame her. Not for this. The blame sat elsewhere, heavier than the ship’s hull. She blamed the ones who’d sent them into the mess without enough to come out whole. Blamed the hands that kept pulling strings and calling it “orders.” And maybe, in the quiet she’d never speak aloud, she blamed herself for not being there...close enough to pull him out, close enough to trade places. She’d lived through enough fights to know it doesn’t matter how much you want to shield someone. The moment comes, the shot’s fired, and the world doesn’t care who you love. She thought about Drake. The way he laughed like he had no business in being in a gunfight, the way he made the worst days easier without even trying. Now he was a weight in a bag in the pantry, and she hated how normal that had become.

Cate’s voice snapped across the lift, calling her bot back, and Olyv’s jaw tightened. She recognized that brittle edge...where grief turns to anger just to stop itself from breaking. She respected it. Knew it wasn’t aimed at her, or anyone in particular. Just at the fact that Drake wasn’t standing here breathing like he was supposed to. Olyv didn’t say anything. Not yet. She didn’t do speeches in crowded boxes of steel. But when Cate’s eyes finally flicked her way, she’d give a nod that said I see you. I get it. And I’m right here. Because for all the heat and noise in her chest, for all the hate for the people who’d played their part in this, there was one thing she wouldn’t let happen, not to Cate, not to herself....She wasn’t going to let Drake’s death turn into another reason for the crew to fall apart. Not when they were the only ones left to remember him right.

Soap didn't want to push Cate. She'd arranged for the meet just prior to the last job, and well... It wasn't like any of them had really planned on having to do the whole 'Sorry for your Loss' gig the minute they got back to Sirris II. She'd been through this in a weird twisted way, but more often as the one tallying up the dead. And trying not to think of the life that lived behind it as she and the others got ready for the next round of their hell. So she wasn't going to get on Cate's snapping, since, well, Soap remembered doing the same when she was in the damned Zoo.

Her gaze turning to look over at Sarah who seemed the least concerned about how this was going to go down, and more just focused on her personal comm. The fox-mod shrugged very, very, minorly. Seemed colder than what even Soap was doing, but considering she was a combat veteran of the Last War, while Soap was never deployed, she figured it was just how the woman was coping. And then there was Olyv. Who looked like she was just about to fall apart on them. Before she could think of something to say, that maybe she hadn't said before, the elevator 'dinged' as it reached the requested deck of the tower. Turning her focus to the task at hand, Soap stuffed her hands into her pockets and stepped out of the metal box on rails, and began to trudge her way towards Kayla's residence. And once at the door, well, Soap hit the button to the side of the door, and waited for the reaction to the four of them standing here, looking like they'd, well, come to tell her that her son was dead.

Olyv hadn’t said a word since they’d crammed into the lift, and the silence clung to her like smoke. By the time the doors hissed open, her throat felt raw from holding it all back. Soap moved first, stuffing her hands into her pockets like she could bury the weight there. Olyv didn’t. She let hers hang loose, fingers twitching, trembling just enough that she had to curl them into fists to stop the shake. Standing there in front of Kayla’s door, she wanted nothing more than to bolt. To put her shoulder to the wall, slide down, and vanish into the floor instead of facing a mother who deserved answers they didn’t have. But she didn’t move. Couldn’t. She was the one who should’ve gone down instead of Drake, and yet here she was....bloodshot eyes, a bitter taste of liquor still at the back of her throat, staring at a door like it was a firing squad. Her jaw flexed, her voice cracking out low, heavy with her brogue when she finally spoke to no one in particular: "Och, saints… feels like we’re aboot tae rip the lass’s heart straight from her chest. An’ fer what? So I kin stand here remindin’ meself I’m still breathin’ when he’s nae? If this dunnae kill her, it just might kill me." She dragged a hand down her face, smearing away the wet in her eyes that had no business being there. there she waited for the door to open, Olyv forced herself upright, but the weight of it sat square in her chest...every step closer to Kayla felt like a dare she wasn’t sure she wanted to take.

Sarah wasn't getting an answer it seemed, and as the lift drew closer to their destination, there was no point waiting any longer. She slipped the device back into her pocket, before turning just in time to catch the look from Soap. "No answer from his mother, and Ori says she has no idea either. She's been in the bedroom with the door locked since she came home.... I guess prepare for her to be an emotional mess?", Sarah finally said, as if justifying her having been staring at the phone for so long for some reason. She didn't know Drake like the others present, so she just didn't have the same attachment to him as they did, or the sense of loss that hung like a miasma in the moving space that was the elevator. Sarah was just kind of there, albeit only so in the capacity of morale support as she could be, and as awkward company.