[tw: mild gender dysphoria]

Today is the day for self-establishment.

In the days that follow his sloppily conceived, poorly enacted integration into a city in a brane that is not his, Rush has not bothered to streamline his introduction to ROMAC and its indiscreetly watchful employees, who take in his ragged appearance and neglected beard and straggling hair with an admixture of pity and distaste. It would seem that scaling ROMAC’s institutional ladder becomes significantly more difficult when it is patently obvious that one has for several years been in an extremely resource-poor environment.

Rush has little interest in truly living here, but existence in any space requires certain foundations. At the very least he will make the necessary adjustments to advance his appearance from ‘unacceptably disheveled’ to, at minimum, ‘academically unkempt’, because said appearance seems to be something his overcritical co-workers have vested an undue interest in, despite the reality that Rush has previously and independently decided, quite simply, that he cannot list all the ways in which he does not give a fuck.

He’d spent most of the night of his arrival divesting his apartment of its non-necessities, which largely involved removal of all furniture save the unremarkable table and its accompanying chairs, and on the whole he succeeded. He favors a space without distraction. The place is etched cleanly in white walls and hard angles, perfectly bereft. It's an advantageous arrangement. The day lacks distractions. The day lacks interference. He showers. He shaves. He makes himself presentable. He cuts his hair. He purchases clothes. They’re similar enough to the ensembles he favored before catapulting himself across billions of light years of space and into Destiny, that of the finite resources. They approach formality. They’re satisfactory. They achieve what they’re meant to. He can radiate poise and smoothed-over self-possession and competence, and this is what ROMAC prefers, the clear-cut and sharp-edged lacquer of deceptive professionalism.

An unreasonable amount of time is wasted in delaying the final constituent. Rush made it his final item for a reason, and this is because that while Destiny did not lack mirrors it did not have them in abundance, and following his release from stasis he took his care to avoid them. He has no wish, then or now, to see the physical evidence of his steadily reversing biology, the inexorable unraveling of years spent meticulously scheduling the proper care. But then when he showers he stares, and he sees it anyway. He locates a medical clinic specifically for those of Rift origin, he memorizes the number of the street, and today he’ll fucking well be done with it. He takes a cab. He’s cutting down his travel time. He’s reducing the half-life of his own escalating, splintering nervous energy, but he has a handle on it. He does. He's certain. He’s performing a necessity.

Rush enters the clinic and makes an appointment, and sits in the sterile white-walled waiting room and thinks of bone density.