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Post by Drucillia Maldives on Mar 16, 2016 11:51:11 GMT -8
Dru sat in the dank little bar on Dressel, hating every moment of being in Breehara and hating even more that there wasn't a single goddamned place in the galaxy she could go and feel any better. There was no better. There was only this. She dreaded waking hours, she put off sleep until exhaustion claimed her, night after night. Most of her days, she spent here in this little bar, watching the patrons drink their lives away, squander their wealth and youth in the pursuit of things that will ultimately slip through their fingers like the slick, wet skin of a frog. Fleeting. It's all fleeting.
She was sober now, a surprising quality to those who had seen her drink in her past life, not that any of them were able to find her or know her now. She ceased to be her old self and walked away from everything she worked for, from everything she held. Suddenly, without him, it was nothing. Meaningless, all of it. She had left her names and titles, left her fortune, left her powers. Left it all.
She bought a junker, and took off into the blackness of space. Looking for where the hurts could lessen, where they would stop. It was a cruel joke that they seemed eternal. She had given much to bargain for time with him and now that she had another lifetime to spend with him, he had been snatched from her, empty hands grasping at the shreds of her memories, clutching them like gold. Everything began to unravel and now here at least it had stopped.
She found this bar on a rainy night, wandering the streets of Breehara watching the rippling reflection of neon in the puddles on the ground. Soaked through and thinking this place was as likely as any to duck into, she had sauntered in and found a booth. There was good people watching here and through their daily dramas played out, she began to find the dull in the ache she longed for.
She came back every day and sat in a booth and watched, drinking some weird tea-like concoction she picked up from a Mandalorian once. Shig or whatever they called it. The Mandalorians put tihaar in it. She drank it straight.
Occasionally, there would be a fight and she would mind her own business until a patron decided to make it her business. That happened a few times. Someone would pick on her, while she was wearing a decidedly Ubese looking set of armor. Someone would topple onto her table fighting someone else. Whatever the disruption to her, she would end the fight. All the regulars knew she was fast and she could fight but otherwise, she was a silent fixture in the corner. They started to call her the Elder. Who else sits in bars and drinks tea?
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Post by Drucillia Maldives on Mar 18, 2016 8:13:42 GMT -8
There were times she thought about her past. There was a lot of time she spent doing that. By now, she was roughly 70 years old. She should be contemplating the decline into death, but she knew if she was lucky, death might welcome her into the blackness of oblivion in another 40 years. Or longer. That wasn't a future she wanted to think about.
She wanted to be angry, but she found one day amidst the depth of her depression that she couldn't even muster that up. It was just grey, and even. The joys were gone and so were the hot licks of hatred that used to boil her. After a long search to confirm the truth her heart already knew, she turned her reflection inwards. She mourned.
It was different this time, the regret was squarely on her shoulders for the squandered time she had wasted trying to fill a hole that she had been feeding her entire adult life. A lot of meditation, a lot of reading, a lot of writing and she had faced down a fair few of her demons. However, she couldn't overcome all of them. Regret was a heavy burden and a deep pain.
Maybe it was boredom, maybe it was a need for new scenery but after being on Dressel for 3 years, she decided to stop waiting for regret to lessen, for death to take her, or for him to come walking through the door. She rose for the day and threw on her faded cargo pants, her ratty teeshirt and the dusty, dirty poncho that was a myriad of grease spots and dirty smears. Her boots were worn to hell, but it didn't matter. They fit fine and they were comfortable.
She slung the Ubese armor in a duffle and shoved her hair under a dirty cap before she headed out of the boarding house she'd been staying in. She had a few thousand credits to her now, mainly from doing odd jobs the landlord needed done. Grunt work mostly. It wasn't enough to buy a ship but it would get her off world. Really, that was all she needed at the moment.
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Post by Drucillia Maldives on Mar 21, 2016 6:26:24 GMT -8
For the first time in about 30 years, she found herself on Nar Shaddaa. She had signed onto a spacer crew back on Gerrenthum in the Outer Rim. She was bored, needed the money and they were looking for a pilot who could hold themselves in a fight if one came along. The work wasn't completely above board but it wasn't exactly like the idea of being on the wrong side of the law made her squeamish. She just preferred to do her job and keep to her bunk, which everyone else was fine to let her do as well. But as they put into port here, the aging freighter needed servicing and the crew was being put up at a hotel by the spaceport.
She wanted to see what had changed so she went out for a walk among the towering buildings and shady holes where the worst elements of the galaxy flourished in the bright light of day. Her feet carried her past familiar buildings with new marquees and different businesses. An old shipping company had been replaced with a weapons shop. An old taxi stand was a small eatery. So much gone. But then again some things never changed.
She looked up at the bright neon sign over the entrance to the Arx Noc, which always struck her as odd. The words meant something dark, the sign was the most violent extreme to that concept they could find. There was a fleeting smile tugging at the corner of her mouth as she stepped through the retracting doors. The wall of smoke and low rumble of some moody music eased any thoughts she might have had that the Arx had evolved into something else. It was a dive bar, and to her eyes sweeping the room, it might has well have been 30 years ago. It was a drop of nostalgia, a balm to soothe the weary mind of a traveler too long on the journey.
She headed for the end of the bar where she used to sit to find a stool, taking a seat and watching the spectacle of the bartenders waiting on the regulars, while yelling at the waitresses who dished the sarcasm right back at them. She ordered a whiskey without thinking when a younger looking guy asked, and as it was set down in front of her, she paused with her fingers curled around the glass staring at the amber liquid. She took a sip, and let the burn slide down her throat, a warm heavy fire she felt she could almost spit back out, as if she were a mythical dragon from a child's tale.
It was good, and it made her think of a bottle of the stuff and her quiet room, but she remembered the hellish nightmares and the unbearable hangovers. She didn't think she could face herself tomorrow if she could not practice restraint tonight. Restraint. Such a strange concept from her now.
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anon
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Post by anon on Mar 21, 2016 9:55:10 GMT -8
Spark.
Light.
Adrift.
A single mote of luminescence against the entropic void of eternity.
It claws against oblivion, struggling for its very existence in the space in between. Every continued moment of being is a victory. Every moment is an eternity. It desperately searches for a thread to attach itself to, an anchor that will allow it to hold on just a little longer. It cannot hold out forever, but here, forever is but an instant. There is a consciousness here, an identity, but it is buried beneath the all consuming battle to simply exist.
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Post by Drucillia Maldives on Mar 22, 2016 8:30:10 GMT -8
She kept herself to one glass, a single drink for old times sake. It tasted good, and the devil who used to sit on her shoulder put a loving hand on her, the caress of desire flickered in her a moment but she pushed the empty glass away from her and ordered a shig. She mused over the thoughts the barkeeps must be thinking, a spacer ordering a tea in a dive bar.
The shig was placed in front of her, a cred pushed across the scuffed up bartop towards the young man again and she took a sip of the warm brew, savoring the mellow tones of the herbs and plants used in this particular infusion. It was mass produced, no doubt, as the tincture had a quality to it that dried plants brought. A faded glory and a subtle flavor on the tongue. She was enjoying it for what it was when she heard a familiar voice behind her.
"It's funny to see you in a place like this." She didn't need to turn and see who it was, the playful tenor of the ship's mechanic was easily identified. The young Corellian slid onto the open stool next to her, looking her over and silently judging the empty glass and the mug of steaming shig.
Tobin was probably in his late 20's, she couldn't tell. She was terrible with ages and she didn't socialize with the crew so any conversations where that sort of information was exchanged likely happened while she was in her bunk with tea and a book. He wasn't a bad looking fellow, chin length black hair and shining brown eyes might have been appealing to some of the women who pined for a rogue. Dru wasn't one of them. She didn't look over at him as he joined her, nor did she speak as she continued to stare into her shig.
"I was coming out of a little grub place by the hotel when I saw what could only be you walking towards this entertainment district. The very idea of you heading for a bar had me intrigued so I had to follow you."
She turned her head slowly, the dark brown of her eyes a heavy weight as she fixed him with a placid stare. He didn't seem phased by her brooding quiet as he reached for the empty glass on the edge of the bar and sniffed it, his eyes calculating.
"Whiskey? So you do drink. How long are you going to carry on the silent thing?"
She regarded him carefully, before she turned back to her tea.
"I speak when necessary. I do not find socializing with the crew necessary."
"Comradery is important to foster within the crew. We need to trust each other and have each other's backs," he parroted the words of Captain Archer. There was a half joking tone, but she could tell he was winding up to be serious. Lately, he had been postering about being promoted up. The current first mate busted on Tobin quite a bit and took great zeal in throwing him off the bridge. Tobin responded by cutting the heater and air scrubbers to the mate's cabin. The petty squabbles were beyond her, but the charismatic Tobin decided to shore up support for himself with others ahead of what could probably be a showdown.
"Captain Archer and I are perfectly content with my performance and place on the ship. That's all I care about." Another sip of the relaxing shig.
"Archer is too concerned with credits and runs to see how the crew functions. Come on, everyone knows that Darb is calling the shots and throwing his weight around." The first mate, Darb, was a Devaronian. He was an alright sort if you did your job. He didn't care much for gab on the bridge and he definitely didn't think it was a hang out spot. Tobin tended to look at the freighter like it was a floating house of hormones and alcohol. She wasn't in the mood to be sucked into one of Tobin's rants about the atmosphere on the ship.
"My job is to fly the ship. To make sure crew and cargo are intact on arrival. The relationships between the crewmembers are not my concern." She firmly stated as she motioned to the barkeep to get another shig.
"Dru, eventually you're going to have to pick a side and I would hate to see a pretty gal like you on the wrong side of a nasty fight." He laid his hand gently on the back of hers, trying to appear earnest. Pragmatism wasn't working so now he resorted to flattery? She suppressed the urge to snort derisively but instead she released her hold on the mug of shig and reached over to place her hand on his, except that where his gesture was meant as a warm sign of empathy, her fingers curled around his wrist firmly as her gaze hardened and her tone became curt.
"I would be far more concerned with my own hide were I you. But let me make myself one hundred percent clear. If you or anyone else disrupts the ship's operations with some petty power play, if you endanger my life, or the life of the captain in any way, I will kill you myself." Her grip had become inhumanly tight on his arm and as he tried to tug it away, he could have sworn she looked different. Free now from her grasp, he instinctively rubbed his wrist, looking at her with an altogether unfriendly expression.
"That wasn't a wise move Dru. I don't take well to threats." He moved to stand from the stool, but she grabbed his shirt collar and jerked him close to her.
"Do yourself a favor, kid. Go find a new ship to play on. You'll live longer." At this point, the barkeep was standing in front of the pair, arms crossed looking at them to gauge whether or not he should call for the bouncer when Tobin put his hands up and moved towards the exit. Dru pulled out her comlink and informed Archer and Darb of the welp's attempt to garner her support. If Tobin was lucky, they would meet him at the hotel with his gear and tell him to take a hike. If he was unlucky, they would do it from the cargo bay airlock as the ship broke atmosphere.
Right now, she didn't care one way or another.
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anon
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Post by anon on Mar 22, 2016 9:14:58 GMT -8
A thread.
A tiny, infinitesimally small link to what was.
The tiniest possible modicum of hope flared before the mote.
The shock of it nearly proved its undoing, but the light quickly gathered itself and grasped the thread with every fiber of its being.
It had an anchor now, however tenuous. Though the thread's existence was fleeting, in this empty hell, an instant and an eternity were one and the same. No longer was it simply clinging to the very idea of existing. Now there was something tangible to cling to, a waypoint that could guide it back home.
It wasn't enough. The mote needed more than an anchor, more than a single connection to what it used to be to bring it out of the dark. It might be enough for a brief connection, but nothing more. It gathered as much of itself as it could spare and sent it surging along the anchor, hoping that someone, something was listening.
If it could strengthen the anchor, it might yet escape. If the call went unheard, it would be its undoing. There wouldn't be enough left to hold out in the dark alone. This was a desperate gamble, maybe the last one it would ever make. It would have to make it count. It dredged up something from its old self, something that it hoped would be recognized on the other side.
We...never...did...find...that...hilltop...
There was no telling what would happen on the other side. Maybe a raging shout. Maybe a pathetic whisper. Maybe nothing. It couldn't know. All it could do was hope, and wait. In this place where time held no sway, waiting was a concept that held no meaning, but by sheer force of will, it imposed the concept on itself. It would wait, and hope a reply came before it was too late.
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Post by Drucillia Maldives on Mar 22, 2016 11:30:06 GMT -8
After Tobin had shown himself out of the Arx, Dru continued to sip tea and contemplate life and the idiocy of young men clawing for power and purchase on a freighter crew. The intricacies of the universe were lost on him. There was no magic or mysticism that could explain away anything in his narrow scope of existence. When he stared into the abyss, there was nothing staring back.
Dru knew better. She knew enough to be a problem, or as she had lately, enough to merely get by. She had seen the terrible and beautiful things that existed in this galaxy and now she hid from it all because it was all too much. She had a problem of scope. One she failed at trying to escape. Once you know those huge, awful, wonderful things exist, you cannot go back to pretending they are children's stories.
So she sipped tea, read books, and flew a ship in order to forget and in part to allow everyone else to forget as well. At least that was what she hoped for. Oblivion.
She had the mug raised, taking a rather large gulp as the shig had started to go cold when she felt a slight tug on her senses, the words forming, punctuated with space and silence as they sounded out deliberately in her head. This was not her thoughts playing with her. She froze, color draining from her face, as she tried to think what she should do. A cursory look around the bar confirmed that she was not about to be ambushed for a second time.
She checked the pile of credits on the bar and figuring it was enough to cover her drinks, she slipped out through the crowds and smoke to the street, where she took off in a rather fast pace back to the hotel. She locked the door behind her as she shut out the light filtering in from the hallway, her eyes focused on a small open space on the floor of the room.
She ripped off her jacket and cap, shedding her restrictive clothing as she prepared to get down on the floor in a meditative pose. Her mind was racing and refused to calm but eventually with enough deep breathing and channeling, she was able to center herself. That was when she found the whisper of a breath, like the unseen movement of a dying wind just on the very edge of her sensory borders.
She bent her mind towards it, feeling her aura connecting with it, waiting to see if it was real or if she was going mad.
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anon
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Post by anon on Mar 22, 2016 12:03:52 GMT -8
The thread became a cord.
The thread became a rope.
Suddenly the mote of light was not clinging to a flimsy strand of possibility. Now it was solid. Now it was sturdy.
Was it sturdy enough? Only one way to find out.
The mote of light struggled to find purchase against it, trying desperately to gain any sort of ground against the emptiness. The void fought back.
It was not accurate to say that it was aware, or even that it existed. It was the very antithesis of existence. It was not a place, and the very idea of being violated every rule that governed it. The mote of light had lingered much longer than anything else ever had, a cancerous growth of substance that it struggled to render into the same nothingness that filled the place between the worlds. Its very existence had infected the void with concepts that it had never known, had given it agency when before it simply was.
The mote knew its time was limited. The darkness was closing in with a tenacity born of desperation. It surged along the rope, caution thrown to the wind. It was now or never.
The mote threw itself out of the space between worlds, snatching the rope along with it, lest the darkness be given a pathway from the void into reality.
Suddenly, it existed.
Raw data and possibility coalesced into the room, a naked soul bereft of the armor of a body. The sudden sensory input was agony. The soul struggled to shield itself. It pulled together a body out of the memory of its existence, wrapped itself in the insulating cocoon of bone and flesh and skin that it knew last in this world.
With the body came identity, came memories. It was no longer a mote in the darkness. It was a man, tall, lanky, with a mop of dark brown hair and green eyes. His skin was almost painfully pale, having never known sunlight. Or any light, for that matter.
He stood in the small room, trying to make sense of what had happened. Only a small fraction of his identity resided within the newly created brain, a gestalt upon which the rest would build. The remainder was locked away for the moment, trying to break into reality.
There was a woman seated on the floor in front of him. She looked familiar. She was important. His mind reached out before his mouth remembered how to speak.
The rope!
She had been the anchor that had let him claw his way out of the void.
The man tried to express his gratitude, but words were slow to come. He felt cold for some reason, and looked down to discover that there wasn't a scrap of clothing on his body. That seemed important for some reason.
"Hi," he finally said, his voice deep and gravelly.
And then the dam burst open, flooding his mind with everything he had ever been. It was too much to take in all at once. His body stiffened and toppled forward. The last thing he remembered before slipping into unconsciousness was the floor rushing up to greet his face.
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Post by Drucillia Maldives on Mar 22, 2016 12:31:47 GMT -8
She had been seated on the floor, her eyes closed, her mind focused when she heard a man speak. Her eyes flew open to find a very tall, very naked man in front of her. The shock of having the room now occupied by two people didn't have enough time to process through her mind when he promptly fell over. She lunged to try and catch him but being cross legged on the floor did not lend itself to quick movements and she only managed to just stop him from braining himself on the edge of a dresser. She eased him to the carpet, before she tore herself up and snatched a pillow and blanket off the bed to put under his head and cover him up with.
Goose flesh had spread across his pale skin, and she swathed him in the somewhat scratchy blanket before she sat down on the edge of the bed and waited. Her mouth gone dry with nerves, her heart beating so hard in her throat, she was certain it was trying to claw out of her body. The moments seaped from one to the next as she watched him, too afraid to see if he was real, too afraid to think that she had truly lost her mind this time. Scared to see if that fleeting moment of his being was all she would get.
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anon
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Post by anon on Mar 22, 2016 14:33:04 GMT -8
Seconds turned to minutes turned to hours as the man's persona and memories asserted themselves on the tabula rasa they had been presented with.
Throughout the night, the man would mutter things, impossible things, as his memories settled in. Battles recounted in one sided snippets of dialogue, observations on phenomenon that no human could have born witness to, descriptions of events from thousands of years in the distant past or worlds that couldn't possibly exist in the universe, all of this and more spilled from his lips.
Reality seemed to flex and distend on occasion around the man. It was nothing a normal bystander would notice, but surely there for the trained observer to pick up.
The temperature in the room would also fluctuate as energy was absorbed and released from his body by mechanisms unseen. At times it would seem like his body had transformed into a block of ice and the room had become a sauna, and at others the inverse, his body on the cusp of combustion and the room a meat locker.
Slowly though, normalcy reasserted itself and the man fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
He awoke slowly, consciousness returning in waves. He looked around the room, trying to get some read on his surroundings.
"Where am I?"
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Post by Drucillia Maldives on Mar 22, 2016 18:44:47 GMT -8
When it became clear that his unconsciousness would not pass quickly, she struggled with wresting him to the bed, propping him up on pillows and making him as comfortable she could. He rambled in his coma, languages she could never understand and of things she could never know. She sat in the darkness and watched him, her nerves frayed to fibrous threads that threatened to undo her altogether. She didn't know if something was wrong or everything was right, but she made notes from the chair by the window.
When the wild magicks faded, and he was still, she dared to pull out a comlink. She had ignored the hunger for food long enough that a tightness had taken hold of her temples and she ordered some food to be delivered to her room. After a good meal and another hour of no change in his status, she called Archer.
He wasn't happy to hear he was going to have to replace a pilot, but at least on Shaddaa, he could get in touch with some contacts and fill her spot. Tobin had been canned the previous night as he returned to the hotel, and that at least brought a small chuckle to Dru's face. Within an hour, there was a knock on the door. Darb had brought her footlocker from the ship as she had asked. A couple pleasantries and the horned one turned and left while she drug the wheeled case into her room and set it down along the wall.
It was late morning when he finally stirred and as he glanced around the room, she replied slowly, with a voice that was saturated with uncertainty.
"My hotel room, Nar Shaddaa. You've been out for 13 hours."
She had the curtains drawn to shade the room from the garish light outside. She pulled back the heavier of the drapes to allow filtered light to pass through the hanging sheers and light the small space.
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anon
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Post by anon on Mar 22, 2016 19:40:47 GMT -8
The light was blinding at first as eyes that had never known sunlight struggled to cope. Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the harsh mixture of artificial and natural light as he begin to take into the details of the room. It was small and dingy, as befitting the locale, but that didn't matter to the man.
"I can't believe I found you, " he said, his voice soft, and a little scratchy. "I've been stuck for so long, it feels like forever. I think it might have actually been forever. Time moved differently where I was, if it could be said to exist in the first place."
He leaned back against the lumpy pillow, collecting his thoughts and trying to fight against the sudden lump that formed in his throat. He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the sensory overload that poured in through his optic nerves. There was still a glut of data to be taken in. The city outside the window was the usual cacophony he had come to expect from the Smuggler's Moon, a raucous blend of speeder traffic, the shouts of vendors and the quiet murmur of the passersby, punctuated by the occasional whine of a starship's drive engines.
His mouth tasted of cotton. It was unpleasantly dry, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.
The threadbare sheets, hard mattress, and scratchy blanket would have ordinarily been an annoyance, but after the endless absence of all sensation, it felt amazing against his bare skin. He knew the novelty would wear off before long, but for the moment, he reveled in the sensations.
The room was surprisingly free of unpleasant odors. Normally cheap hotel rooms on Nar Shaddaa smelled like something one might clean out of the bottom of a trash compactor, but that wasn't the case. He suspected that the woman had run a sterilizing field over the place when she first checked in. He could smell the air pollution from the poorly sealed window, a bit of stale food, and just a hint of ozone, but all the other odors were purely natural. There was the sharp tang of fear. Had that come from her? Possibly. His arrival had been unexpected, to be sure, and he could only imagine what it must have been like waiting for the better part of a day for him to regain consciousness. There was a subtle musk, comforting and familiar. That he was sure was from her. He'd recognize her scent anywhere.
All of this was processed in a matter of moments. The man's grasp of time was still somewhat tenuous, but his mind had always been lightning quick, a vestigial trait from a previous form. He sat up and opened his eyes, relishing the burning in his abdomen as muscles unused to their labor were put to work.
"How long has it been since I saw you last," he asked, a hint of desperation and longing in his voice.
He wanted to reach out and hold her, but there were too many unknowns. He wasn't sure his body could handle something that strenuous just yet, for starters. Also, he didn't know if she'd let him. The fact that she was here, that she had given him a way out of the void, meant that their might be something left of the bond they once shared, but he dared not hope for too much. Not yet. He knew the woman had a dark side, literally. He wanted to believe that she still cared, but he wasn't prepared to face the possibility that her demons might have taken over in his absence. He'd wait until he was sure to try to initiate physical contact.
The fact that a part of him decried his hesitance as cowardice could not be ignored, but emotions had always been a concept witnessed at a distance. Only towards the end had cold logic been replaced by feeling, and he still wasn't comfortable throwing caution to the wind. Not yet.
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Post by Drucillia Maldives on Mar 22, 2016 20:33:16 GMT -8
The in between, the back sides of black holes or the immutable never never, whatever name it held, it was a place she long feared as that was where the things that had no explanation dwelled. The place they popped in from and the place where they drug things away from the ebb of time and space. When she could not find him, she had believed that by some twist of magnetism or mysticism, he had been wrenched to that ageless nothingness. She was both relieved and crushed to at last know she had guessed his fate correctly. It was equally reassuring that he was also searching for her during that stretch of distance.
She rose slowly from the chair and eased down on the edge of the bed so that she could look at him properly. He looked as if he had slept for half a day, there was fog behind his eyes but she suspected it was more than just a deep sleep shaking off. Answers would come in time, but first she needed to be sure. She was visibly shaken, as if she was waiting for the rug to be pulled from beneath her again, to be taunted with an apparition that would vanish under the weight of her touch.
There is warmth from the bed under her where his body had been laying only a few moments hence and she can't quite swallow, her hands flat on the bedspread, her shoulders scrunched up like she was braced for an impact. However, her eyes lock with his, the white nebulous light from the window washing out the brown and making her look older and tired. She sniffs briskly through her nose before she speaks cautiously.
"Seven years." She was overcome now, the shining of her eyes overflowing as she teared up. She reached a hand over, fighting through her fear to touch him and know that it was no nightmare, no trick of her mind or the bottle. But once hand inched towards him wasn't enough and she was crawling over the blankets to shover her arms around him, to feel him in her embrace so that she would not feel so crazy anymore.
She laid there, curled into him, tears leaking from her as she held him, relief and joy finally finding her after so many empty years.
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anon
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Post by anon on Mar 22, 2016 21:38:55 GMT -8
His mind reeled.
Seven years. That was a long, long time. By the standards of his life, maybe not so much, but he had learned to appreciate the scale of time mortals were accustomed to. Before he could truly cope with that fact, she was in his arms, and he in hers.
It was hard to tell just how long they stayed like that, all tangled up. If this was a holodrama, they would have passionately made love, but real people don't work like that. They were too busy being emotional wrecks for anything like that. She was sobbing, he was sobbing, and they were both far too preoccupied with affirming to themselves and each other that this wasn't a dream to worry about their libidos.
Eventually, their eyes dried, but still they remained in bed. At some point, the man gently extricated the blanket from underneath the tangle and wrapped them both up in it. He was still quite naked, but that didn't matter. They had each other, and it wasn't like they were expecting company. And given the current mood, he suspected any interlopers would find themselves ruinously unwelcome.
Despite having slept the better part of a day, the man was exhausted. He was also starving, and the scratchiness in his throat had long ago turned into a persistent burning. The needs of the flesh would have to be addressed sooner rather than later, but he was willing to put it off a little longer. His bladder, however, was not so patience, so with great reluctance, the man climbed out of bed and made his way to the refresher. He did his business and, as he cleaned up, got a good look at himself in the mirror for the first time.
The face looking back was nearly a stranger. His hair was longer than he was used to, and came down almost to his shoulders. He had what appeared to be a couple of weeks' worth of beard growth going on too. That would have to be fixed soonest. His body was emaciated. Ribs were poking out, and his cheeks were obviously sunken underneath the beard. Dark bags underlined his eyes, which were red and puffy from crying. He looked a hot mess. He resolved to get himself a big meal, a shave, and a haircut as soon as possible, in that order. He was a little surprised his body was in such rough shape after having just been created, but he figured that was the result of a lingering temporal instability. His position in the timeline should be fixed now, hopefully.
He stepped out of the refresher and sat down on the bed again.
"I'm going to hazard a guess from your outfit and say you're going by Dru these days? Not that I mind, just trying to figure out what to call you in public. I can't go by any of my old identities, not yet. Inadvertent consequences of the place I was at."
He tried to figure out how to explain what the problem was, that the void was no longer as empty as it had been, but he couldn't figure out how without calling unwanted attention down on them.
"I suppose I'll need a name of some sort."
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Post by Drucillia Maldives on Mar 23, 2016 6:34:10 GMT -8
At some point exhaustion took her as she had been awake for more than a day while she kept her vigil, apart from a few quiet moments here and there where she had dozed off for a few minutes. Her sleep was dreamless as she lay there, her body surrendering the stress and the tension it had carried bound up in her. When he stirred, she woke up and pulled herself out from under the tangle of the blanket. She had fallen asleep fully clothed and now she was hot and uncomfortable. She pushed her sleeves up her arms and headed for the foot locker while he gave himself the once over.
He looked terrible. Coming back from wherever he had come from had not been kind to him and she was unsure if he needed a meal or a bacta tank. She unlocked the case, and rummaged until she found what she was looking for. On the end of the bed, she placed his old duffle, carrying in it everything he had worn previous to his startling disappearing act. On top of it, she laid a worn leather belt with a holster on it and an antique firearm that probably had not been properly cleaned in 7 years. She lowered the lid of the footlocker and stepped back to the chair by the window, sinking down into it as he reentered the room and nodded to his assumptions.
"Yeah, it's Dru now. Rumors are I'm dead or gone. Better to let those propagate than try to assert anything else. I bounce around, take odd jobs, and try to avoid the spotlight. So far, so good."
She shrugged at his predicament but she understood the problem with aliases and identities just as well.
"All in good time. Right now, I could do with food and some tea."
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anon
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Post by anon on Mar 23, 2016 7:02:48 GMT -8
"I'm with you there. Pretty sure I could eat a bantha."
Something about the appearance of the old duffle bag made his eyes water again.
"After all this time? I...I don't know what to say. Thanks for having pants for me, for starters."
He slid the pants on. They were loose as hell, but there was a belt, a normal pants-holding belt, in the bag as well. He cinched it as tight as it would go. Still wasn't perfect, but they stayed up on his hips, and that was the important part. The plain black T-shirt was similarly cavernous on his emaciated frame, but it served its purpose as well. The boots still fit, at least.
He ran his fingers over the worn leather of the gunbelt, but left it on the bed for the moment. The years had not been kind to it. The leather had dried and cracked in spots. The bullets might still be good, but it wasn't something he'd want to risk, and the old revolver would need to be stripped down and reblued. It would probably need most of the internal springs replaced as well. It could be done, but not without tools and parts he didn't have on hand.
He didn't blame her in the slightest for the lack of upkeep. He could only imagine how painful keeping his belongings had been, with no idea when or if he'd make his way back.
Until he could replace the belt and repair the gun, the long phrik dagger that he had kept before his disappearance would have to do. That would do nicely for the moment. He snapped the retention loop of the canvas sheath around his belt, with the pommel facing down, and let the shirt hang over it.
"What's good to eat around here?"
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Post by Drucillia Maldives on Mar 23, 2016 7:20:05 GMT -8
"Yeah. I couldn't let them go. Hope is a helluva drug." She shrugged again. Unsure of everything and anything still. "Don't go getting too worked up. I had to lie to your daughter that the damn revolver and duster disappeared with you. She's got your rapier. She's not speaking to me at the moment, still blames me for this. Thinks I had you killed or thrown in some evil torture dungeon."
She grabbed a flight jacket off the back of the chair and shoved her ratty hair under her cap. She looked like hell, a far cry from tailored suits and business dress or more stereotypical attire. Also missing were her traditional weapons. She pulled on a blaster belt, buckling it over her hips. The holster held a DH-17, looking pretty scuffed up, scratches marring the oxidation.
She sighed thinking about where they could go but decided the easiest place was the closest one.
"There's a little joint on the corner that seems to be fairly decent."
She headed for the door, making sure she had everything before she opened it and looked at him expectantly. The walk down to the corner was quiet, the place was busy but it didn't take long for them to get a couple trays of some strange sandwiches and sit down at a table that probably needed a good wipedown. A little food and some tea perked her up some and she swallowed a bite, looking over at him.
"We don't have to stay here. I've got enough saved up to get us passage off Shaddaa. The question is where do you want to go?"
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anon
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Post by anon on Mar 23, 2016 8:11:50 GMT -8
The man winced. His daughter could be a handful under the best of circumstances. She didn't want him to leave with Dru in the first place, and he could only imagine how poorly she took news of his vanishing act.
"I suppose I'll have to let her know I'm alive at some point. We've protocols in place in the event of my sudden disappearance, but I don't think either of us anticipated something quite like this. Still..."
He frowned, trying to figure out what their next move should be. He mulled the question over as they walked to the food joint. The stuff was pretty typical for Nar Shaddaa: inexpensive but somehow overpriced, with enough calories to choke a Hutt and enough preservatives to pickle an exogorth. Which, come to think of it, was exactly what he needed at the moment, along with copious amounts of the bitter tea they sold.
High class fare, this was not. The man didn't care. It was reasonably tasty, and he could actually feel the strength creeping back into his limbs as the hunger pangs subsided. Once he felt marginally more human, he turned back towards the topic of where to go next.
"There's a safehouse on Obra-Skai we can crash at for a little while. We'll find plenty of supplies and credits there, and maybe a ship. It's a Network safehouse, so it's not tied to me directly, but I've got access codes that can't be revoked."
Their use would also let his daughter know he was still alive, which was a bonus. They were the only ones that knew those particular codes existed, that they had been hardwired into the Network at a level so deep that even a forensic slicer wouldn't know they were there if she wasn't told exactly where and how to look. Using them set off a digital Rube-Goldberg machine that would see to it that an untraceable message to a very particular commlink address in about a day or so.
People had often accused the man of being paranoid in his past life. He thought paranoiacs were as cute as they were shortsighted.
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Post by Drucillia Maldives on Mar 23, 2016 8:41:42 GMT -8
She considered it a minute and shook her head.
"I'm a wanted target. The Network gets tipped I'm on their turf, they come for my head. I told you she was really mad at me. The bounty on me is so absurdly large, I have generally have to pay cash and stay off tech. There's been no reported, confirmed sightings of me in the galaxy for about 4 years."
She pushed her empty plate away, her eyes pulled out to the street, watching people walking past, carrying on with their daily lives in this bustle of degradation and capitalism. How could she tell him about everything that had gone on in the last few years. She reached over and took his hand, gently stroking his knuckles with her thumb.
"A lot has changed. I'm not the same person anymore. And where I might have been down for a fight before, I don't have one in me. You mentioned a hilltop, and that's fine with me. A nice quiet life with you is what I've been dreaming of the last few years, thinking it was never gonna happen. I love you, I've missed you and I just want to worry about catching up and not if a death squad is gonna come busting in the door any minute."
She tried to smile a little, taking a sip of the tea and chuckling.
"So if we could avoid unnecessary engagements until we know what your status is and if you are whole, that would be great. That's just my two cents."
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anon
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Post by anon on Mar 23, 2016 8:57:21 GMT -8
There was a slight ripple through all the glasses in the room, as though someone had gently shook each one.
"I really need to have a talk with that girl," the man muttered to himself.
He sighed and reached for Dru's hand across the table. If they couldn't rely on Network resources until his daughter was placated, that would severely limit their options. He had a few redoubts in case the network turned on him, but they were necessarily hard to get to. He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to burn them just yet, either. Given the sorts of goodies stored there, it would be literal war if the Network ever learned of their existence.
"Well, I'm all for the quiet life. I've got some credits set aside for emergencies that no one knows about. We can get offworld, lay low for a while, and live off of them until we can get things sorted out with the Network. Know of any good places to go to ground?"
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