Private All Gas, No Brakes

[Sam Rodarch]

There was sound.

The humming of a room. Breathing, her own. The far-away ring of a head knocked into mince. Breathing, not hers. It was like that for a bit; she couldn't have said how long. It just was. Sound.

Then light.

Fuck.

Sam opened her eyes and immediately shut them. Too bright. Too fast. Too soon. It didn't hurt; it was just habit. She expected a spike driven through her forehead. There was none. She opened them again, and it was just a room. The wrong room. A slow room. Didn't feel real.

The body.

Definitely wrong. It was slow, like being submerged in molasses, and her weight felt wrong. Nothing hurting where everything should have. She didn't know how to judge the body when she couldn't feel it hurt. Couldn't read shit. On instinct, Sam tried to move. There were straps; she tested them lethargically on autopilot. No dice. Then she noticed a distinct, larger absence. The right arm, a bandaged stump at the elbow. That was new. She'd had a moment ago in the plaza. Despite reality, she tried to wriggle the missing four cybernetic fingers, and Sam swore she could have felt them.

And last, the voice.

Mercy.

She turned her head, half her face feeling the wrong shape but without the accompanying ache. A big woman, she forgot how fucking massive she was. Sam's heart kicked for a moment looking at her, and she could still taste the blood in her mouth. It was not the grit. Even now she was trying, very badly, to measure something physical. Distance between her and the door and the strength of the restraints. Nothing usable, just how the brain went these days.

Sam could remember watching her own fists rain down upon a face that knitted itself back together like living meat. She could remember the laugh, that strange warmth. Sammy. Everything else that happened was up for debate. She stared at Mercy, sedate and slow.

"M'fine," she slurred after a delay, before a slow blink, quite calm all things considered. "Where's ma arm?" Would have been a bastard to get out; the thing had been anchored straight into the bone. Mox had called it the humerus, and Sam hadn't found that very funny. "Ah want it back."

---

Mercy

 

[Mercy]

Sam Rodarch

Dog with a bone.

How else to describe Sam?

Maybe if Mercy had a touch more self-reflection, she would see her own face back in Sam's dull eyes. The Mercy that could have been if she had stayed on Nar Shaddaa and her connection to the Force began to dull from an over-abundance of chems, alcohol and damage incurred. Instead she had left a victor and all the while turned herself into a conqueror.

What was a Sam to her, shaped like a Mountain and representing Violence?

More than most would assume.

Her hand settled gently on Sam's shoulder.

"That old thing? Why do you think you need it?" A squeeze softly. "You are in rough shape, Sammy. Unlike me... your body doesn't remember what it is supposed to look like. It doesn't reknit itself within heart beats."

A sad smile her way.

"You are broken. I broke you. Three times now, but this time around I will not leave you in pieces and abandoned. I promise you that."

Now she understood what responsibility to her children meant.

 

[Sam Rodarch]

She felt the hand on her shoulder, the usual pain completely absent. Massive. Warm. Placed, not struck, and Sam, not knowing how to process that, stayed very still.

"Ta hit with," she drawled through a sedated mouth on the matter of her arm, the priority of having a limb that could do incredible violence, not one that could be smothered with enough pain relief to send a wookiee to the void.

Mercy wasn't wrong, mostly.

Rough shape.

It was the only shape she'd known for a long time now. Her face didn't reform after a beating; it settled in a new, worse shape. A squint nose, a swollen ear, a mouthful of shrapnel, and a jaw that clicked. It had been like that for as long as she could remember, and she couldn't remember shit. Since before the Cairn, before Mercy, before Sult. She ate hits, and she got back up a little different every time.

Three times. Yeah. Not enough.

But broken?

"Ya said get strong. Ah am strong," she didn't object out of any sense of pride, and Sam wasn't one to hide her feelings. Or could hide her feelings, for that matter. It was just how she saw it. Flat, plain, fact. She wasn't ninety tragic pounds of a spewing, shaking drunk anymore. "Ya said be a killa. Ah kill." It was easy now. Didn't think about it, just did it. "M'not broken. Still works."

---

Mercy