Private Dead Girl Walking

[Reima Vitalis]

BILBRINGI
YARDVIEW ARMS HOTEL
THE CONSTELLATION SUITE
[MOOD]
​

For Reima Vitalis' money, there was no worse way to to start a message with We need to talk. She regretted employing the line against Wedge Draav -- but in her experience, nothing guaranteed a response quite like We need to talk. She had left the details vague -- cowardice on her part, sure in the knowledge that if she had looked into his face on a vidcall she would have backed away from the ledge -- but hoped the enigma and urgency in her voice would prompt him.

Even now, as the agreed-upon hour approached, Reima wasn't sure he'd come. She paced to the window of the large sitting area -- a wall of glass, really, offering panoramic views of the shipyard. Hulls in process were scattered about. Not the must luxurious view, she had to admit, but one knew what one was getting when one came to Bilbringi.

Kezz -- Oliver Keswick to strangers -- was standing near the holovision, a folder of documents in hand, opened but unread. Reima's principal private secretary had no way of knowing what was about to happen. If he had, he might have tipped someone off, someone like Petyr Kenat, He was instead focusing on the true reason for the meeting, the coverage of Reima's visit to the shipyard, looking to cement a supply relationship between Bilbringi and the Tregessary Naval Shipyard. As part of a good will blitz, she had come with a cargo of rare metal alloys from the Heirate for the shipyard, toured it and talked with the workers.

"I had my doubts about the hard-hat," Keswick said, eyes glued to the media screen where Reima, looking tall and slim in a navy skirt suit with an ivory blouse, was looking out from under a hi-viz yellow hardhat during a meet-and-greet with shipyard workers. "But it works for you. The Board really did you a favor."

Reima glanced over to the screen, dark eyes critical. "Should have worn trousers," Reima said. "I look like a dilettante."

Whether Oliver Keswick agreed with her assessment would remain unknown, because there was a chirp at his comlink. He folded the closer shut, pulled it out of his pocket. He held it to his ear. "Keswick. Yes. Yes. Is he? She -- " A pause as he looked at Reima, his eyebrows furrowing with an unspoken question. "I will certainly ask Her Royal Highness if she wishes to see Captain Draav." Reima ignored his incredulous look and simply nodded once. "She would. Now?" Another nod. "Yes, that will suit. Very good." He disconnected the line, looked to his employer. "Your chief detective is incandescent, ma'am. Something tells me this isn't a surprise to you."

Reima looked as if she might respond but demurred, turning back to the window and moving fingers around where her engagement ring once sat. Finally, she said: "You can see Wedge in, then you are excused. I'll call you after and we can review the Bilbringi board's proposals." Keswick nodded officiously and bowed from the neck. She self-consciously smoothed her skirt, tucked her blouse, and switched off the media screen.

If she could manage not to throw up, she might just survive this day.

Wedge Draav​

 

[Wedge Draav]

​

BILBRINGI
YARDVIEW ARMS HOTEL
THE CONSTELLATION SUITE
[TILL YOUR NAMES NEXT TO MINE]

Reima Vitalis​

We need to talk.

That echoed in his mind, more than any thunder or any gunshot or any shot in anger that had ripped through him or at him. It wasn't a pretty thing to think about, four words that ripped into his psyche more than any bad idea he ever had. He'd been a mess lately, sure. But who wouldn't, with what he found out the family was saying about him? Reima herself was his anchor, but lately the storms were pulling the ship out to sea too much.

Keswick was the kind of person he never wanted to be around. Kezz, as some people called him, was corporate, an ass-kisser, and subject to the whims of people he claimed to be lesser than. Oliver let him in, and quickly departed. Wedge didn't say a word to him. He'd already been disarmed at the door, a security detail careful to remove any weapons he had on him. He carried a pistol nowadays, and a backup usually. He was a renegade, doing what he could to undermine whoever wronged him in the galaxy, and whoever wronged the galaxy.

He ran a hand across his face. He knew the symptoms of an execution, a firing squad. He knew what was about to happen, but every part of him wanted to pretend it wasn't going to happen. All it took was a look at her left hand. He walked over to the window, out of arm's reach for her. A respectful distance. Even in their tumultuous time apart, he still knew when to be close and when not to be.

"I grew up watching ships being built. Touring the shipyards. Seeing these great big, great mighty machines bein' built from one side of Anaxes..." He unfurled a finger from his pocket. A burn on his hand, traveling up his arm. Smelled like bacta. It'd heal and wouldn't scar with the miracle of bacta and kolto treatments. But it still hurt. That much was obvious. He gestured his finger at the left- "To the other." He sighed deeply, ocean blue eyes watching the shipyards ahead of him. As if taking himself back to that safety of childhood, before the destruction of his entire life, the uprooting of his family. The death of pretty much everyone he ever knew. All he had left, was Reima. His eyes drifted to the folder, and he didn't need to even think about what was in it.

And he was pushing that away, too.

All that pain he carried in him, he couldn't figure out what to do with. But maybe she figured out what to do with him. He was silent for a while. He wanted to disarm the situation. Make it easier for her to say whatever it was she was about to say. Perhaps it was an act of contrition, a mercy. Or maybe he wanted to not feel like the bad guy.

"You can tell your people to stop callin' me Captain, you know. Rank don't mean too much when the Navy don't exist."

 

[Reima Vitalis]

Reima stood, watching, as Wedge approached the window. Even then, even under those circumstances, she felt an almost irresistible pull toward him. That was worst of all. The want hadn't gone away, not during the heated arguments or the frigid disappointments or the moments of absence. Reima loved him still. She wondered if it would ever release her.

"They're not going to do that," she told him. Reima didn't say why. Didn't say that she had insisted that he be referred to respectfully by her office even if she could not impose that requirement on her brother. She didn't tell him that he was not universally disdained in the Renascent Heirate. It wouldn't matter to him, and it would only make her throat hurt.

"I brought you some things," Reima said after a moment. She turned to the bedroom doors, slid then open along their track, and picked up a duffel bag. "A jacket, some sweaters. A book." Things he had left behind when she had banished him from Aegis. "Will you sit down?"

She took a seat on one end of the broad cream sofa, leaving him the choice of sitting at the other end or in one of the armchairs opposite. She set the duffel beside her, more a man's of protecting herself from her own impulses than anything else. She crossed her ankles, deploying a perfect duchess slant.

"I appreciate you taking the time," Reima said, trying to sound like she didn't resent not knowing where he had been and what he had been doing. Perhaps she didn't have the right to know the details. She supposed one silver lining, one cherry on top of this shit sundae, was a resolution of the ambiguity. A clean break was fairly up-front: she would have no rights to him ever again. "What have you been doing with yourself since we last saw each other?"

Wedge Draav​

 

[Wedge Draav]

​

BILBRINGI
YARDVIEW ARMS HOTEL
THE CONSTELLATION SUITE
[OIL MARKS ON THE WALLS]

Reima Vitalis​

"What have you been doing with yourself since we last saw each other?"

Wedge snapped his head. He bit his tongue. Since he was cast out. Found unworthy. The man with no family left, dead or missing, cast out because of his low birth and his poor response to his entire life shattering. He had one solid rock, and thanks to the randomness of the universe in terms of his birth, and the actions he took in response to his cascading series of events, that rock was taken, or rather, pulled away from him. He wasn't sure how much of the decision was hers, or the ice queen herself.

"Since I..." He had to pause again, a deep breath through his nose. "Left.... I have been rather busy. I don't think I need to lie or withhold anything from you." His eyes, cold blue, flicked from hers to the desk, her folded posture. She was here on business. Something other than just him, or maybe, the business was him.

Was he just an item on an agenda, a royal agenda?

"Smuggling, fighting, guerilla runs into Sith space." He took a breath, looking up at the ceiling, leaning back in one of those exquisite chairs they had lying around. He gave a little smirk. Even now, he couldn't be.... Wedge. "Stole my old X-wing." He looked back down at her, from the ceiling.

"Don't act like you ain't know that, though, pretty lady." He leaned forward, running his hands together, looking out at the shipyards, massive machines of war, commerce, and travel being built. He took another deep breath. "Your Royal Highness seems to be doing fine, though." He was hurt. Hurt to see that she wasn't as broken as he was. She still had a family. She still had a home to go back to. His was occupied space, shattered, broken into hundreds of pieces. His family, scattered, dead, or missing.

Hers was busy thinking about finances, appearances, and trade deals. His was mostly dead, floating in the void of space, transports and freighters cut down when trying to flee Sith space. No burials. No funeral rites. Just the cold emptiness of space. Every ounce of him wanted revenge. He had the demon in him, the demon of self-destruction, of revenge, of hopelessness. It was safe to say that the light hadn't quite gone out from Wedge-

But it was pretty dim.

 

[Reima Vitalis]

[THE B-TCH IS DEAD]​

Reima's eyebrows furrowed slightly. Not in anger, really. Not even in confusion.

It was sadness. That Wedge seemed not to know her at all. That whatever closeness they had once had was no longer holding. Couldn't hold, maybe. Perhaps hadn't held in some time. "How would I know that?" she asked him softly. "How would I have any way of knowing what you do? You have been an enigma to me for months, and that was when you were -- occasionally -- in the same room."

Her voice wasn't angry. It wasn't hard.

"Never mind," she said quietly, knitting her fingers together until her knuckles went white. "It doesn't matter anymore."

Smuggling. Fighting. Guerilla runs. Theft.

Not the activities of a gentleman, certainly not of a duke. Only there did the anger begin to stir. Not at Wedge, really, and not even quite at George, but at the grotesque little symmetry of it all. George had made a snobbish, unfair assessment of Wedge, and Wedge, in turn, had so obligingly turned around and proved him right. From both ends they had conspired to leave her looking like a damned fool.

"Did you always think I was so cold?" Reima asked. She stood without quite meaning to, as if sitting still for another second might be mistaken for composure. "So unfeeling? Is that Duchess meant back in Revenant Squadron? Not the callsign. Not the joke. The actual opinion." She crossed to the wet bar to give herself something to do and reached for the gin. "Because I was just some poncy little princess without anything so pedestrian as a foot in the real world or a feeling to bruise?"

Reima poured three fingers into a heavy-bottomed glass. "Was that the joke? To take someone posh and priggish and see if you could make her break?" She didn't turn back to him, but looked at his reflection in the dark mirror that hung over the bar. The gin caught the light, tossed it in a wave pattern against her cheek for a moment. She didn't drink it.

"You won't," she said, her voice several degrees cooler now. Still not angry. A woman wondering just how much of the last years of her life had been built on shifting sands. "None of you can. But you will all insist on trying. Drink?" Reima held the gin up by the neck, only then turning to glance at him.

Wedge Draav

​

 

[Wedge Draav]

​

BILBRINGI
YARDVIEW ARMS HOTEL
THE CONSTELLATION SUITE
[NOTHING WITHOUT]

Reima Vitalis​

Wedge flicked his head.

"Duchess was your doing. Maybe you are cold, maybe you are the product of your environment, maybe you are the spare heir as you so boldly put it oh-so-many times, Reima." A single finger pointed at her. "And maybe you were a woman after some low-class fling, some brute of a man, somebody who weren't born with all that he got." He rose to meet her. And then, she could see the exact moment. The facade of a strong man, and instead, the broken reality of him lately. No Reima, no family, no rank, no Alliance, no hope.

"But you know what you were, even if any of that was true? You were mine. And I had you." His cheeks pulled up, squinting his eyes with searing, painful tears. "I never wanted to... break you. Make you change. I love you for you, big house, big name, a planet full of people clamoring to get a glimpse of what fuckin' hat you're wearin' today. And I thought to you, to all of them, that maybe, all the things that I did, maybe I was more than some low-born piece of shit."

He took a deep breath, composing himself.

"I know Natasi's been watchin' me. Askin' about me. Keepin' tabs. You don't do what I do without bein' watched, but I don't think Natasi counted on me bein' smart enough to know when I'm being watched. But what else do I got now, Reima? Your family isn't frozen in orbit or vaporized. They're out there, sitting, eating, dining, plotting, signing bills and making appearances. What do I got left now, Reima? What else am I supposed to do? There's only a few things I'm good at, and if loving you isn't on the table no more cause on account of who my parents WERE-" He walked across, taking a deep breath. His hand didn't reach for a glass. It reached for the bottle of gin. Tears welled at his eyes. And once again, for the umpteenth time that week, Wedge Draav took a drink.

A long one.

This was better than the rotgut whiskey he'd been slowly killing himself with. He took a breath after his drink.

"Then what else is the galaxy supposed to do with me?"

 

[Reima Vitalis]

"I've never cared a fig about your so-called low birth," Reima said irritably. "It has never mattered to me, not once. But I wasn't what I am now when we met. I didn't have this family apparatus, this media attention. I didn't even have George. But how I felt about you and what I thought about your background didn't change. I still don't care about your background. I care that you behaved like a jackass and made it impossible for you to stay under my mother's roof. And now this?"

She turned and pointed at him, still holding the bottle by its neck. "Smuggling, Wedge? You know, it may well have been possible to talk my mother off the ledge. George would still think you unsuitable -- he would still find you unacceptable -- but until he's in the big chair his opinion doesn't control my life. But if my mother found out about the smuggling -- there are things she is prepared to forgive. Rudeness, yes. Crime? God damn it, Wedge."

Reima set the bottle down and took a sip of her gin, let the astringent heat burn down her throat. She wanted to cry, but she refused to indulge in the theatrics, not now. Besides, there were other matters, now. "Your family are all -- ?"

It was terrible. Truly. But something about the way he said it rankled her, too. Like it was an excuse. "You expect me to believe that this is what was left to you, now? Smuggling and thieving and God knows what else?" She shook her head, her anger spiking now. As if she hadn't been trying to carve out a role for him, something to make use of his skills and talents. "There was plenty to do. For a man of your talents and gifts there will always be something to do. But -- "

No. She cut herself off and took another drink of her gin. It burned just as much the second time. She felt herself teetering on the edge of the trap. The trap that indulged his fantasy that his exile was solely a result of his birth and her family's unbearable snobbery and relieved him of any culpability in his current circumstances.

"I didn't just ask you to meet me because I wanted to give you these things," Reima said, gesturing vaguely toward the duffel on the sofa. "I wanted to see you in person because whatever else has happened to us, I believed you deserved the dignity of hearing it face-to-face. And because I wanted to look into your eyes and see if there was anything there from which I could take hope." The dullness of her tone was enough to suggest what the answer to that was. "Perhaps I overestimated your appetite for dignity."

Reima threw back the rest of the gin and went back to the sofa. She reached into her pocket, produced her engagement ring, placed it delicately atop the duffel, and stepped away. "This isn't happening because my mother watched you -- maybe she did, I haven't the first idea. It's not because George interfered. Or because the Renascent Crown is tedious and hungry and always butting its nose where it doesn't belong. It's because I can no longer deceive myself into thinking that I can be your wife and my mother's daughter. You weren't made for that system."

Reima had more to say. She wanted to shout, and point, and hurl her glass across the room, and stamp her feet until there was a noise complaint. But she had a lifetime of suppressing her feelings ahead and it was best to start practicing that now.

Wedge Draav​

 

[Wedge Draav]

​

BILBRINGI
YARDVIEW ARMS HOTEL
THE CONSTELLATION SUITE
[Maybe the night will take me home]

Reima Vitalis​

Wedge, without much of a second thought, beamed the bottle of expensive gin across the room. It flew with a velocity and speed, and impacted with such violent force that it shattered any illusion of a peaceful conversation remaining. An accusatory finger followed Wedge taking an aggressive standing posture.

"There it is, right there. You can't for a second allow yourself feel, you always bite it back, let it fester. I'm startin' to think that no one ever really knows what you think because you never let anyone know what you really think, what you really feel." His words were cruel, vicious, biting.

"I watched the Alliance, go. I watched, my family, die, be killed, split apart, and God knows what else happened to them. I watched the entire galaxy just sit back and watch. Make merry and treaties, friends, with my enemy. So, yeah. I smuggle whatever I can into Sith space. I fight. I ambush Sith patrols. I like watching them die. I like imaginin' that eventually I'll get the son-a-queen that done did my family in." He paced away from her, seething, his body writhing in hurt, anger. He was a wounded animal, his entire world collapsing around him in every instance. He'd been dreading this instance since George's painful comments. His own pride, his own arrogance and his inability to reconcile led him here. He'd figure that out later, but for now, Wedge was just hurt.

"So, no, Reima. I wasn't made for that system. I wasn't born right. Your brother's right. I'm just some fuckin' nerf herder now." He marched over to the duffel, but stopped. Something in his demeanor shifted when he finally laid eyes on the ring. His hands gingerly reached out, intertwining the small piece of metal in his hands. It was a simple ring, not much by royal standards. He slumped into the chair, one arm on the duffel bag, the other holding onto what would surely become later, an echo of an old life, a painful object in which he'd circle his mind around, while circling the drain.

And he was quiet for a while. Guilt, shame, regret washed over him in droves. A thousand apologies he could utter, and the guilt he could not begin to imagine, let alone bear.

"I let it all go, didn't I, pretty lady?" He curled his hand around the ring, pressing it into his palm. His hair, loose, once combed, fell about his face, a screen almost, before he fixed his hair, and collecting himself. Wedge's outward appearance was his litmus test, a temperature reading for how he felt. He wore his heart on his sleeve, and he wore it blatantly. "You know. The worst thing, I can hate you, I can blame you, George, and Natasi. But really, I know who's to blame for this. I don't hate you Reima. I never have, and I never will. Fact is-

I'll love you 'til I die."

He stared at the ring. He couldn't bear himself to look at her.

 

[Reima Vitalis]

Could I leave you? Yes...
Will I leave you? Will I leave you?
Guess!​

Reima flinched as the bottle struck the wall with an unpleasant crash, shattered, and rained glass and gin across the wallpaper and the carpet. For a second she stared at him, her own pulse suddenly thundering in her ears. Then she felt something within her give way.

The very last patient, civilized, straining thread by which she had been holding herself in check. When she spoke, it was in a tone of voice so cold and so sharp that it could only be motivated by fury. He had only heard her speak that way once before. "You are so full of shit," she said through a clenched jaw. "You are so completely full of shit I can smell it from here. You saw the Alliance collapse? You saw your family die? Join the club, Wedge. Life has taken from us, from all of us."

She took a step; her gin shuddering in the crystal. "Just because I don't perform grief for the galaxy to see doesn't mean I don't feel it. I watched the Alliance fracture, too. I watched my brother nearly die in the Netherworld. I lived in the shadow of my mother's death. My father died before I was born. My earliest memories are of watching my cousin Pierce bleed to death in front of my brother and I after the Ssi-Ruuk disemboweled him. I have seen enough horror for three lifetimes -- not that that makes me special in this galaxy -- so don't stand there and confuse my refusal to throw bottles with an absence of feeling."

Her breath hitched once, as she approached the edge of something. The final bit of restraint, the door that she had closed on what she might have said to Wedge. But he had kicked that door in. He had asked for it.

"And yes," Reima said. She lifted her glass to her lips and finished it, then hefted the glass in her hand. She could throw it. She could connected her feelings to the room with violence. Maybe she'd like it. Maybe she'd feel better afterwards. She leaned over and set the glass down on the coffee table instead. "I watched you collapse as well."

Her voice had gone deadly quiet. "I watched you become the cringing mediocrity you have become. I watched you shrink from the man I loved into this -- " She gestured sharply, contemptuously, not just at the shattered glass and wet carpet, but at him, the room, the whole sordid little spectacle. " -- this self-pitying creature that has turned being aggrieved into a vocation."

She was crying now, but she seemed entirely oblivious to it.

"You want to talk about being watched, Wedge? I watched you. I watched you pull away and make a display of resenting my family -- me, by proxy, it turns out. Every gesture that my mother made to try to bring you in, met with that same well-mannered contempt. Every offer of help that you turned into an insult. Every act of love that you made into condescension." She pointed her finger at him now, every bit of frustration she had been trying not to acknowledge over the last several months rushing through her veins like a poison. "And all the while I told myself it was temporary, that grief had made you a stranger but that if I waited, if I endured, if I just loved you hard enough, Wedge Draav would re-emerge from all this -- this theatrical ruin."

She lowered her hand, finally allowing herself a swipe at one cheek, smearing mascara on the porcelain of her flesh. "He didn't. Which is what makes this farce actually a tragedy. I love him. I will always love him. I don't know whoever this is."

There was a knock at the door and Reima moved toward it without looking. She slid the security chain into place and then opened the door. Her plainclothes detective stood outside eyes going first to the chain, then to the smear of mascara on her cheek. She muttered something to Reima, who straightened and squared her shoulder, sniffled, steadied herself. "No. There was -- an accident. I am unharmed." The detective said something a little more forcefully. Reima shook her head and said, "No, really. But I will. I have it here." She held up her panic button which seemed to mollify the detective.

The conversation concluded, Reima shut the door, disengaged the security chain, and turned back to the room. Not to Wedge specifically.

"Do we have anything more to say to one another?" she asked, her voice just as quiet as before, if not quite as cold. Only exhausted.

Wedge Draav
​

 

[Wedge Draav]

​

BILBRINGI
YARDVIEW ARMS HOTEL
THE CONSTELLATION SUITE
[PRETTIEST DAUGHTER ]

Reima Vitalis​

He just sat there and took it. He let her have her frustration. Her righteous anger. She was right to be angry. She was right to be upset. He deserved it. He deserved hell, after what he did. He wasn't the Wedge she fell in love with. Wedge that she knew, wasn't this... mess. He was an Officer, a War Hero. And Reima became one because of him. She became more than her birthright. He became more than his station.

Only now, he returned to the mud, and she returned to the palace. He crawled and crawled, only to fall. She was going to leave him behind. She had to. He wasn't the same man anymore. Would he ever be, again?

He leaned back in his chair, tapping the ring on the arm of it. He was silent for another long while, Reima discussing with her security detail. Another facet of her life that rubbed it in his face. She was protected, she was guarded. Part of him resented that fact. If his family had guards, personal caretakers, people that answered doors, maybe they wouldn't be blown out in space above Anaxes. Maybe his father wouldn't have been shot to death outside his family home for refusing to give up information about the shipyards and Alliance loyalists.

"Yes. You seem awfully aggrieved and downtrodden now, Reima. Worrying about what you're wearing, not when you're eating. Don't-" He held up a finger. "Don't even pretend to compare struggles right now, Reima. I'm sorry for making a sport of it, but don't you dare even sit there and pretend what you have now is remotely close to bad." He said with gritted teeth, suppressing his anger for the first time.

"You gonna sit there and tell me that the Royal Houses, your brother, your mother, would suddenly be okay with all that I am, and all that I lack?" He lowered his finger. He clicked his teeth and shook his head. He knew the answer. He just wanted her to say it.

"I'm sorry about the bottle, Reima. Bill me for it, so you don't have to deal with all that." He looked up at her, thinking over her last question.

"I never thought I'd be in a position where I'd have but one thing left to say to you. As terrible as all this is, I never-" Another long, thoughtful pause. He wiped his eyes. "I never wanna imagine anything without you. Life, or a lack thereof. So, no, Reima. I don't know what I have left to say to you. Cause I don't wanna stop sayin' things to ya, frankly."

 

[Reima Vitalis]

Reima glared across the room at Wedge, her eyes cold and furious.

"You know perfectly well that's not what I meant," she said. "You know full well what I meant. You have to twist my words to make me seem aloof and out of touch. I am not trying to win a prize, or to put my troubles against yours. What is the matter with you?" She hated that she stamped her foot then, an ineffectual tantrum by a petulant princess. She hated that he could still inspire that kind of reaction in her. She hated, most of all, that they had come to this pass, where he was going out of his way to misinterpret her.

"No," she answered his question honestly. "No, they aren't going to accept what you are and what you lack. But my mother, at least, never held your blood against you. She doesn't now. But the way you behaved? Your new pastimes? No, they would not accept that." She drew herself up to her full height and surveyed him as if he were a grisly crash. "I wouldn't, either. I absolutely will not. We were talking about having children, Wedge, and then you flew off the handle and turned to a life of crime. None of us are going to accept it. George shouldn't have said what he said, but everything that's happened since then? That's because you're miserable and angry. Those are choices you made."

Her fingers twisted together, thumb brushing against the spot where her engagement ring once sat. It was tender, like a bruise.

"Forget the bottle. I'll write it off as tuition. You've taught me a valuable lesson." She took a step toward the window, her hands unclasping so that a fist could ball around the panic button she had showed the detective. "I wish things were different, Wedge. I wish your family were safe. I wish George hadn't said what he said. I wish you hadn't done what you did. I wish I'd been enough for you. But we are where we are now."

Wedge Draav​

 

[Wedge Draav]

Reima Vitalis
​

"Yeah I guess sitting in a manor, instead of smugglin' weapons and ambushing Sith patrols, is a whole lot better. I guess playing Princess and Prince and the spare heir to a throne that don't give a fuck about me- and the upcomin' king thinkin' I'm some backwater piece o' shit..." Wedge clicked his teeth, and put up his hand.

"I don't think you even know what I've been doing. You think after what happened, I could just sit there, and play house and royalty and garden parties, finger sandwiches and shakin' hands?" Wedge stood up, hands on his hips. He had somewhat more muscle nowadays. He seemed to be packing it on more- he was training again. Not that he was ever weak or skinny, but it was obvious he was ready for a fight more nowadays. A real fight, even ones outside the cockpit.

"You have always been enough, baby- just." He pinched his eyes, squinting, before he spoke again. "They killed my family, Reima. My family ain't here, they ain't at a house, at a manor, and they ain't comin' back. But they got killed, and I didn't know what else to do besides what I do best, and the only people that are givin' a shit about the fight are people who ain't supposed to be there. So yeah, I roped in with some bad folks. I roped in with the bad folks because not even the fuckin' Republic seems to be wantin' to do anythin' other than shake hands with every Sith and Mandalorian they run across."

Wedge grit his teeth. Anger, deep-seated. Hate ran deep. Hope didn't. He was almost broken. He might've already been.

"I hope all them people protecting your brother your mother, all them folks- that pay him his tax money that let him live in that big fuckin' house sure are grateful that he's born so much better than him. Cause he's such a fan-fucking-tastic leader, ain't he? You know what bothered me, the thought never crossed my mind 'till I heard that George, that pesky little George, say them words out his weak-fuckin-lips."

He clicked his teeth.

"What you mighta said about me. Never crossed my mind until I heard him crackin' wise.." He waved his hand again, dismissing the thought. He didn't need to describe his fantasy about beating the ever-loving-fuck out of that pompous rich bespectacled dork and what his wife might've said about him in private. Not his wife. Not even his fiance. He had to push those words out of his mind. He rubbed his hand. There was a lack of darkened skin- a flashburn that didn't affect his engagement ring. Happened a few weeks ago, before this all happened. Close call with a blaster from a bad guy.

Too close.

 

[Reima Vitalis]

Reima quaked minutely in silent fury at Wedge, the flare of her nostrils the only outward sign of it.

Part of her pitied him.

The man who needed the world reduced to a shape he could survive. If she could no longer be wholly his, then she had to belong with the others: George, Natasi, the entire ghastly royal apparatus, all of them laughing behind their hands at the country bumpkin who had briefly been duped into thinking he could ever be welcome. As if she had not spent so much of herself proving again and again that she wanted him standing next to her. Asking him to leave after he had erupted at George and Natasi was proof of treachery, naturally, not the simple fact that a man who spoke as he had could not expect to remain under her roof.

It was cowardice, in its way. If he allowed for even the slightest nuance, Wedge might have to admit that he was not wholly wronged.

And he could argue his dead family and his wrecked career and how cruel George had been and just about get over that line -- just about -- close enough for horseshoes or hand grenades.

"If you must think that I would say anything about you behind your back, then you must," Reima said coldly. "Frankly, I have no intention of arguing the point. It's time for you to go, Wedge." She gestured toward the door. "By the way -- not that you care, not that you ever would -- I have every intention of preventing my brother from attempting to humiliate you about the... dissolution of our engagement."

The word hit her harder than it hit him. Dissolution. It was palace-speak. Perhaps she was a coward, too, in her way.

"I'll make it clear that if they seek to demean you in the press -- in any way -- that I will immolate myself in such a scandal that it will truly be worthy of the name. In case you were considering telling all. The sex. The drugs. The drinking. In case you want to hurt me, and hurt them, know that I am prepared to do it myself if they come after you."

She walked toward the door. "The monarchy will stand. I may not, but that's rather the point, I think." She paused, a hand on the door's handle. "This isn't a request for you to stay your hand, you understand. I believe I know better than that, now. I'm simply telling you what I am prepared to do. Be careful out there, Wedge." Reima looked up at him finally as he came near the door. "You have more to give this galaxy than to briefly illuminate one part of it in a suicide mission. Don't spend yourself cheaply." She turned the handle, pulled the door open, and stepped aside to clear the path. Her protection officer turned, hands behind her back, present and prepared.

"Goodbye, Captain."

Wedge Draav​

 

[Wedge Draav]

He died right there.
​

He wanted to catalogue the moment, the exact microsecond where he felt his entire world shatter. Whatever was left of Wedge, probably died when she went for the door. She didn’t care. She cared more about her title. Her money. Her mother. Her cowardly brother.

Every dream he had, died. Every hope he had, burned away. His pretty blue eyes didn’t well with tears. They didn’t gloss over. They just stared, and widened. He felt his soul leave his body, the brutality of his newfound situation. Every reason he had to live for, evaporated. Oily shadows of hate and malice lingered at his mind. Pity and self destruction led him here. Stubbornness and self hatred, self loathing and an addiction unchecked.

So, he stood. But. Nimble fingers crossed a silver box. Expert deftness, newfound tricks of sleight of hand deposited an ornate box into his pocket. Back left, quick as lightning.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t snivel. He just stared in betrayal and hate. Of her choice. Not her. Her choice. He was alone now. That dawned on him as he crossed the threshold. He stopped, grasping the doorframe, perhaps finally a break in his demeanor, a slight shift in his weight to indicate he was unsteady. He was wearing his Alliance Officer signet on that hand, his right. He looked at Reima, taking in her face one last time. He thought of being cruel. A snide remark. A stab at her royalty. Her pride. Her dedication to a stupid idea like monarchy and titles and traditions built around oppression.

“See you starside, pretty lady.”

He left. He didn’t cause a fuss. He didn’t scream. He didn’t even cry.

He died right there.

Reima Vitalis​