A Grave for the Stars [Isaiah | GUIDE]

[Magdalena Lethe]

Three weeks after the tragedy of Ichor...

Everyone always talks about the calm before the storm, but hardly anyone talks about the silence after it's passed. Weathering the violent tides can take as much out of a person as the preparation and in some cases ... the survivors are so few it can hardly be called a happening at all.

Out of the twelve that landed on Ichor, 11 returned, only six survived.

As the days turned to weeks, the Beacon became a silent hall of grief as one after another slowly succumbed to lethal levels of radiation poisoning. Magda remained comatose as the doctors and scientists worked feverishly to uncover what ailed her. In the end, the venom had spread throughout her entire body and her body had begun to fight against itself. But she didn't die.

She just slept.

All outlying projects were recalled. Pathfinders and Starnaughts pulled back to home base while the entirety of GUIDE and its mission hung in the balance with the life of its FOUNDER and greatest source of drive. Atheema held a meeting with the full GUIDE ensemble - they could not, in good faith, press on with the mission while everything else teetered on the edge. Mandatory paid leave went into effect. Some handed in their resignation letters despite the continued promise of hope.

Others left with their bonus and not a backward glance, likely not to return.

Several remained, staunchly supportive of the dream that GUIDE symbolized.

Wherever it was that [member="Isaiah Dashiell"] ended up, he would receive a holomessage from Atheema one faithful afternoon.

"Greetings Mister Dashiell. I apologize for the suddenness of this message, but I wished to inform you that we've finally managed to stabilize Miss Lethe and she has, finally, awakened. She's asking for you. She wants to speak with you. I do not know why, but it seems important. I implore you meet this request - until we discover some way to treat her condition, there is no assurance she will thrive much longer. Roenkari over and out."

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

The time after being put on leave was a blur. It had taken weeks to pull Izzy off of the Beacon away from the med bay. As one of the highest ranking Pathfinders now after Ichor he had plenty of reasons to stay and bury himself in work. But Atheema made it very clear that he needed to be gone when she shut down his connection to the holonet. The days and weeks that followed before he received the message were spent rock hopping in the Outer Rim. He tussled with Judges and swoop gangs, and spent almost all of his bonus on booze, spice, and other creature comforts bouncing from shadowport to shadowport, sometimes stopping on legit stations for a breath of semi-clean recycled air.

The minute he got the message though he left the spice and the Chiss girl without saying a word. He probably shouldn't have been flying, but to hell with that.

The Beacon was easy enough to find. Izzy wasn't looking too good, but definitely better than when he left the Outer Rim. He tried to comb his hair but it was just...too much. Scruffy Izzy was the best Izzy anyways. His shuttle landed without much fuss in the hangar. Seemed that the Beacon was running at least a skeleton crew. He was wearing his usual layers and smelled of cigarette smoke, cheap Corellia Whiskey, and shadowport.

[member="Magdalena Lethe"]

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

Smell and appearance duly noted by Atheema who greeted him in the hangar, she offered a wane but warm smile nevertheless.

"Mister Dashiell, it is good to see you. I thought perhaps you might not come back but Miss Lethe assured me you would." She took a breath, blue eyes taking in the picture of the man who seemed to have gone into lifestyle remission since being forced from his work. It made her all the more aware of how important his work was to him, how it was to all the GUIDE employees, and she hoped the others were faring better off than he seemed to.

She hoped the others would come back like he did, too.

"Do you need to eat, rest, or clean up before seeing to her?"

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

He shook his head, slightly too oily hair bouncing back and forth.

"No, take me to her," he said quietly. "How is she?" The last time he saw her she was still unconscious and he couldn't do anything but watch from outside a window. It had made him feel all kinds of emotions seeing her like that, but knowing she was alive and that she wanted to speak to him? That brought up a whole different set of feelings that he wasn't sure how to cope with yet.

Maybe this meeting would help.

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

A quiet nod, Atheema turned to lead the way through the eery quiet of the hangar.

"Awake," she said, the two syllables hardly inspiring optimism, "weak, failing. The signs are ... troubling. The venom isn't quite like anything I've seen before. It's spread like a virus, it's attacked her immune system, it's attached to her cells, it's changed her. She got very ill once we managed to wake her and we realized that she no longer has the ability to fight off infection of any kind. We've managed to stabilize her in a sterilization chamber so she can rebuild her strength without having to deal with outside bacteria. I'm working on developing an environmental suit she'll be able to wear in order to leave the chamber."

On top of trying to figure out just what, exactly, it was they could do to reverse the effects of the venom.

"The good news is," Atheema tried at some amount of enthusiasm, "it does not seem to have effected her mind. Mentally, she is clear, if not heavily burdened by the losses on Ichor."

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

He didn't know what else to say after that. His mind was still a little foggy from his rock hopping adventures, and Atheema wasn't exactly inspiring confidence in Mags' condition. He simply nodded and continued to follow her. He shivered and rubbed his arms.

"Has anyone else come back yet?"

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

Atheema gave him a wilting sideglance and shook her head, "No ... Miss Lethe hasn't called anyone else back yet. She...well, maybe that's a conversation best left between you two."

She did not take him to the medical wing but to the science lab areas that were typically used for the study of various materials by the research team. One quarantine lab had been cleared of projects and refurbished into a sterilized living quarters. Atheema lead him in through the lab entrance and into an observation room with a tinted window. Screens and panels fed data on vitals, a communication area sat at the center. Atheema leaned to press a call button that sounded a tone, "Miss Lethe? I have Mister Dashiell here, are you-"

"Yes," Magda's voice, noticeably weak, "I can talk."

The window tint dissipated to allow free view into the room. It was white, clean, and sterile with a hospital bed, a small table with a few chairs, and a couch set before a holo-screen. Magda was sitting up on the couch wearing scrubs and a sweater with the hood pulled over her head. She was facing the holoscreen which offered a view of the system the Beacon currently sat at the outskirts of: Ceto.

"Very well, I'll wait outside then," Atheema offered Izzy a meek smile and indicated the chair to him before leaving the lab.

Magda sat in silence for a few moments, wondering if the sudden pounding of her heart was from being woken from rest or the presence of Isaiah.

"I told her you'd come back..." she began without looking up, "but I was worried that you wouldn't."

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

The room was silent, save for the occasional beeps of the monitoring systems after Atheema left the two. Izzy took a seat before the window and let his eyes wander around the empty, white room. His eyes finally set on Mags as she broke the silence with her voice.

"Of course I'd come back," he said quickly, almost defensively. He surprised himself, he didn't realize that string of words would have hurt as much as they did. The two had been through a lot of tough scrapes together but Ichor had undoubtedly been the worst. He felt responsible for this, her condition.

He looked down at his crusted boots.

"So what did you call me back for?" He found himself looking back at Mags' hooded form. Why wouldn't she look at him?

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

That was a good question.

Why had she called him back?

Magda sat silent for a few moments, feeling slightly put-off by the defensiveness of his response.

"I just thought..."

That he'd find something more interesting and fun to fill his time? He'd always taken any opportunity he could to make a break for the booze and women. Gambling. She liked to think he wasn't stealing things anymore but even had her doubts about that from time to time. It had always been best not to think about these things because when she did it made her sad.

Her shoulders sagged into a slow, deep breath. Best not to think about those things either.

"I called you back to thank you for everything you've done for GUIDE. You've been with us from the start and you've never said no to a mission. You've helped more than you know and I consider you a... friend. I felt that you deserved to hear these things properly instead of getting them in a message, and you'll be one of the first to know that ... "

"...I'm shutting GUIDE down."

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

It took a few seconds to process what she had just said.

"What-" He stood up so quickly the chair fell over, clattering to the floor loudly in the relative silence of the lab.

"What do you mean you're shutting down GUIDE?" His mind began to race and his feelings told him to fear the worst. "You can't just...I didn't...!" Come all this way to be pushed away again? Of course that's what would have happened. At the end of the day she was just another rich girl, no backbone. These sorts of thoughts began running through his head. He couldn't tell if he was angry or sad but he was definitely upset and those feelings rolled off of him in the Force unconsciously.

"Why?"

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

The sudden clatter of the chair and rise of his voice made her flinch. Visibly. But it wasn't either of those things that made tears fill her eyes. It was the boil of emotion presently pouring off the man on the other side of the glass. Magda wasn't an empath by any means, but she wasn't numb to the Force either.

Her shoulders shook with sobs forcibly muted. She hated crying in front of others and she hated that he was even here to witness it. This wasn't how she wanted Isaiah to remember her if the worst should come to pass with her condition.

"We're going bankrupt," Magda managed, voice cracking with the strain to cry quietly, "we've lost four major sponsorships over the last year alone from war and politics. We were in the black before Ichor and the contracts I was counting on fell through while I was sick. We're hemmorraghing funds. We have enough left to give everyone a dissolving bonus and send them home. With what happened on Ichor ... I can't..."

"I can't put people's lives at risk like that. Five people died and it's my fault."

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

He wasn't blind. He saw her, could hear her barely over the com and his breath became caught in his throat and his hands tightened into fists with the realization of what he'd done. A sigh escaped his lips as his head landed with a soft thud on the glass. Why was he making this about him? He wasn't the one stuck in a clean room with a failing immune system. He didn't almost die of some alien poison, and he sure as hell wasn't the one keeping the lights on.

But there was one thing that he couldn't let go.

"It wasn't your fault, we could have never known Mags. Exploring...Charting uncharted worlds and systems comes with a risk and its one we all signed on for."

She needed to understand that this wasn't her fault.

"Mags, look at me." He said it, almost pleading.

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

Mags wasn't hearing it. She refused with a slow shake of her head and a deep sob. As the CEO of the company it was her fault, their deaths were on her hands. That's what she'd convinced herself of.

"I don't want you to see me like this..."

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

"Please Mags, let me see you. Look me in the eyes and tell me this is what you want." He was pressing his arms against the glass now. He wanted to be inside there talking to her face to face, not through this glass and com.

"If...if you want to shut down GUIDE tell me facing me and tell me where we're going from there."

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

"I can't...I don't..."

She wiped at her face with her hand, feeling overwhelmed and exhausted and strongly ill. Somehow this conversation wasn't going the way she envisioned. It was proving to be much more difficult than what she had mentally practiced. Why was it so hard to tell him what she wanted? Probably because she couldn't stand the thought of disappointing him.

"Can...can you call Atheema in? I feel...ill."



A short while later Atheema was pulling a quarantine suit on over her clothes. She made a point to mute their comm receiver so Magda wouldn't hear them.

"She told you then? She plans to shut down GUIDE?" the woman frowned, threading her arms into the sleeves and adjusting the attached gloves over her hands, "GUIDE is in a bad place, Isaiah. That's the truth. But I think there's still hope. I think we can make it through this, but we can't do it alone."

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

The conversation had left him more drained than he had imagined when they landed in the hangar of the Beacon. He felt half zombie half maelstrom and there wasn't much in between. His gaze seemed locked to the floor and his shoulders were slumped, but he still managed to mutter under his breath.

"Even if GUIDE was going away I wasn't going to leave her alone like this. You don't have to ask me to stay." His hands found their way into his pockets and he managed a weak smile at Atheema. He wasn't ditching her again, even if last time was by force.

"Can you tell her I'm sorry...For all of this. I should have killed that stupid thing when I had the chance," he paused and muttered, "I should have killed all of them."

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

This made Atheema pause in her movements, a faint smile forming on her lips.

"I'm glad to hear that..." and despite his crestfallen mutterings didn't lose the smile. She leaned towards him to place a hand on his shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze, "You both need rest. Why don't you ... take some time to relax tonight. Get yourself cleaned up, have a good meal, hm? Creia's here, she would be glad to know you've returned. Then come back tomorrow. Maybe we can get you suited up and in the room then and you can tell her that yourself."

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

He shrugged and nodded before exiting the lab. He wasn't sure he would be able to rest much here. He hadn't been getting much sleep in general since he'd left the first time. It wasn't hard to find his old bunk in the crew quarters. It was surprisingly empty on the Beacon. He knew they were only running a skeleton crew, maybe even mostly slave circuitry, but the emptiness was still eerie.

His holonet terminal was still on the desk, so instead of meeting Creia face to face he opted to just mail her. He wasn't much for seeing anyone face to face now. With the message sent he kicked off his boots and peeled off his clothes, sending them down a shute in his room to be washed...which they desperately needed.

He spent a solid hour in the refresher. He wasn't sure if it was a Pathfinder thing or not, but his room didn't have a sonic shower like the other public refreshers on the Beacon, but a true, hot water shower. The water was calming and the heat relaxed him. He dried himself off and plopped in the bed underneath the covers. His clothes would probably be back the next day...Hopefully before breakfast.

 

[Magdalena Lethe]

Being in space meant creating an artificial circadian cycle on board the Beacon. As the 'morning' hours approached the lighting in the room shifted to a soft golden glow of LEDs along the perimeter of the crew quarters - one of many galleys that had housed several hundred GUIDE employees at one point in time.

It was ... very quiet and empty, Atheema noted as she walked along the aisle between the bunks.

"Good morning, Mr. Dashiell," the woman said quietly as she approached the only bed with a pair of feet at the end, "I hope you got some rest. Unfortunately your clothes aren't quite ready yet, but they should be later today. I've brought you a Pathfinder uniform," she held up the folded articles of clothing, "not your preferred outfit, I realize, but clean. How are you feeling?"

 

[Isaiah Dashiell]

Izzy groaned under the sheets, pulling them tighter over his head and exposing his feet. He shivered under the cover and peeked up at Atheema, the dim lights of "day time" nearly blinding him.

"There's no one else in here...I'd feel a lot better if those karking lights weren't on" Izzy was not a morning person evidently. A bare arm reached from under the covers and grabbed the Pathfinder uniform and dragged them into the dark depths beneath the sheets.

"Thanks for the clothes..."