Private Could I Leave You?

[Reima Vitalis]

ANAXES​

Leave you? Leave you?
How could I could leave you?
How could I go it alone?​

It started off so innocently. Reima picked up Wedge's datapad to check her messages, thinking it was her own. She was rather disorganized, staying as she was on Anaxes in a foreign environment, visiting with Wedge's family. Wedge had recently come into some unexpected free time, and though Reima was uneasy about how that was going to play out, she had dutifully taken a leave as well. Not as much standing by her man as a silent rebuke to the whole sordid affair. The most decorated pilot in recent Galactic Alliance history, a war hero several times over, crumpled and discarded like so much flimsiplast. It was disgusting.

And yet in that innocent moment of mistaken identity, Reima discovered something shocking. A shadowy D-Mail that she would have immediately dismissed as spam if not for the context.

Her blood went cold.

Then her blood went hot.

It was, perhaps, lucky for both of them that Wedge was out of their shared accommodation for the moment. She might have said something they would both regret. Something that would damage their partnership irreparably. There were some things that even the deepest of loves could not survive, after all. So Reima Vitalis did what she usually did in situations that made her anxious and angry: she chain-smoked on the balcony and brooded.

When Wedge finally returned from his errand, he would find Reima coiled like a viper around herself, as if to shield herself. Aside from the stiff coldness evident in her, the jagged remains of her thumbnail and her wide dark eyes belied fear. The fear of being in a place not her own, dependent on someone she was no longer sure could be relied upon, and terrified. But when she turned to him, her voice was cold like the void both of them had narrowly escaped so many times. Every practiced opening gambit, every sly opening salvo designed to suss out the truth slipped from her mind like marbled through her fingers and what came out was cold and hard and sharp, escalating in both volume and incredulity as the bewildered demand ran its course.

"Have you completely lost your mind?"

Wedge Draav​

 

[Wedge Draav]

I was unbound by duty, but bound to revenge

Wedge’s errand was short. It was something simple, a caf run for the two of them. Sweet for him, plain for her. He took a deep breath as he entered their new home- temporary as it was. Anaxes was a good place to land, a soft place with soft people. His family was here- and the visit had gone well. The rest of them would be coming back in the next few days.

Wedge wondered when he stepped through the door if he’d survive the next few days. Her reaction was the sign that he didn’t need to ask- the datapad being opened, the smell of chain smoking. She found out. She knew.

Wedge stood still for a moment, his mind playing through his options. How to respond. How to justify himself. But that anger- that repressed rage from it all. It came out. The hothead in Wedge spoke first.

“I haven’t promised a fucking thing to them- and they came to me! And frankly I have half a fucking mind- THAT I HAVE NOT LOST- to maybe share with them some ideas and things after what the fucking-“

There was a small table near the door, a place to read a book or drink tea when you got home before the dining room and before the rest of the house. Wedge used it mostly to take off his boots. He lashed out in his rage, kicking the chair.

“Alliance did to me! I gave my life to them, and they threw me away for some fucking bullshit treaty with some bullshit Mandalorian! At least the Empire respects me a little bit more than those fucks in the Alliance Navy! Not one fucking person stuck up for me above my station! Not one! They just cut me loose!”

He let it all out. But he knew he’d get it flung right back at him.

 

[Reima Vitalis]

She didn't know what to expect.

Reima and Wedge rarely fought. She couldn't remember the last time. They disagreed sometimes. They had discussions. But this was a different thing. A different scope, a different scale. Something she didn't recognize in herself took over then, when Wedge kicked the chair and it came tumbling toward her by virtue of her position at the other end of the entry. Not at her, she recognized, not his intent to strike her, and it wouldn't have. But she reached out to catch it all the same, then carefully righted it and set it by the wall.

When she spoke again, she had wrestled that fury back under control. She was frostbite. "I understand," she said. The disconnect between the words and tones should have been chilling. "I understand that the Alliance has treated you badly. No one but you could understand that more than I do." She took a step forward. Another step.

"But this?" Reima brandished the datapad like a weapon -- one implicated in the commission of a crime more than one she was using to threaten him. Her lip curled. "The Empire? Wedge, what were you thinking -- even meeting them?"

Wedge Draav​

 

[Wedge Draav]

From spit shined to spit on.

He clicked his teeth, throwing up his hands. He was angry, sure, and this was Reima, but he still- was just angry. He lifted up a finger, straining his eyes, his pent-up rage barely contained.

"You still have a career, you still have all your rank, pay, entitlements. So no, I don't think you understand. Badly doesn't even come close."
He took a step forward, matching hers.

"I've killed so many people, Reima. Men, women that had families, hopes and dreams. I killed them and I killed them for the Alliance. I can NEVER take that off of my ledger. I had to believe in what I was doing. I have all the medals, the scars, the attempts on my life- I killed and killed for them. And then-"

He pointed at the datapad.

"Then they kicked me out, they cast me out because I spoke up against an enemy. You, me, Revenant, god damn heroes all of us, and now what!" He threw up his hands in frustration, pursing his lips, his eyes welling with frustrated tears. "Nothing. No trial, no letter, nothing. I was dragged out by the people I protected for almost two decades." He tapped his forehead.

"So when the Empire came and approached me- I heard them out. I didn't agree to anything, I didn't say anything. They sought ME, out."
He stood there, breathing heavily, a lot of things on his mind- and none of them particularly good.