Private I Don't Wanna Be Me

[Beatrice Govan]

Oh.

All the illusion of the life and times of Miss Beatrice Govan were shattered in two sharp words. A small frown crested and passed after a few seconds, small mourning for the continuous stream bullshit that had spewed forth from her datapad. It had been enough to fool a horde of pedestrian idiots like Barbara, but evidently not enough for one Emryc Qosta.

Was she supposed to double down? Feign shock and protest a more mundane existence? After all, Evelynn had lied for personal safety rather than the thrill of being a tragedy steeped in mediocrity.

The viennetta arrived as she considered her options, the layered ice cream-based dessert an exciting symphony of thin dark chocolate and mint. Despite its magnificence the Sith kept her gaze levelled at the man opposite the entire time, her facial features steeped in a realm of serious thought that went beyond desserts.

Finally, she closed her eyes and snorted, peeling off one glove and then the other, which in turn revealed part of the golden apparatus that was her entire right arm.

The Skeleton Key.

Very well, came the soft yet practised telepathic tones from the Silent Sister, sent from her mind to his as she chose to pique curiosity in bold statement, after.

It almost seemed suave as she picked up her spoon with elegant gilded fingers before once more blinking with confusion, nose crinkling with implication and lips drawn tight. Was this the wine at play? Yes, let's blame the wine.

After what?

 

[Emryc]

Very well... after.

Emryc Qosta stared, unblinking, at the woman seated across from him.

There's people out there in the galaxy that'll try to get in your head. The voice of Pa Qosta cycled through his immediate memory train, as if he were hearing it for the first time from the old man's mouth. Try to twist your gears. Try to do to you what you've been doing to lesser shleps for years. Only they're not going to be anywhere near as good at it as you can be, and you wanna know why?

After what?

Because whatever they think they can do to you, you can do one thousand times worse.

Pa Qosta had many skills to speak of. He was a brilliant business man and a genius when it came to knowing who to trust and who to kill. Whatever was left in the middle? That was the churn, and the longer you kept them in the churn, the easier it became to tell if they were meant to trust or meant to kill.

"After you are recovered from the procedure," he replied, nictitating membranes flashing across his eyes after a length of time. The procedure was the easy part, the recovery was the challenge. Emryc would have bet it was one she was more than up to, but he was no longer a betting man.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Oh, so not sex? Evelynn shot back in brazen fashion, knowing full well that telepathy kept such scandal between them both, I thought to myself, 'good grief, I'm already in a wheelchair!'

She'd had stranger liaisons, the thought of which brought a small smirk to the woman's face. Every day that she remembered that Nemene Talith was dead was a good one.

That sounds perfectly agreeable, however, Evelynn continued with a mouthful of mint ice cream, which as it turned out, was horribly awkward to eat without a tongue. She supposed that the joy of melt-in-the-mouth was lost without such a vital organ. Alas, it really was quite delicious.

The Sith placed her spoon back down and gave a small nod to the Vienetta, offering the man a taste of frozen luxury before slipping her black gloves back on and once more hiding the giant gilded beacon of her true identity.

I would appreciate it if until then, I remain Beatrice Govan to you.

Tap-tap-tap, fingers once more upon the screen.

"You should try the Vienetta, it is sulbime."

 

[Emryc]

"I don't want your leftovers, Beatrice."

~~~

244Core
Oren City - Oren TeTra HQ
One month following dinner - one week post surgery.

The Oren TeTra HQ wasn't exactly a hospital, and wasn't exactly a place you would send someone to do major surgery or procedures with a high likelihood of complications like mortality. But since Oren TeTra's recent acquisition by a private buyer, the company that had once been floundering on the verge of bankruptcy due to poor corporate politicking was slowly and quietly making a comeback via new trade agreements with some rather interesting hi-tech industries.

Their R&D department, for starters, had been completely overhauled and remodeled for projects centering around nano-tech. They had hired on one of the best scientists in the industry ... so much the best that she'd had her previous operations shut down and she'd been put in high-profile prison. Qora Tel Alam was an interesting character, or so it was said. Emryc hadn't met her.

As a matter of fact he hadn't met 90% of his employ ... rather, they hadn't met him.

Just as it should be.

Emryc was aware he was following the long-standing pattern of his predecessor, Pa Qosta, but feth if he cared.

Evelynn was one night away from discharge and had been served her final dinner in the makeshift hospital room (laboratory) she'd been staying in during her recovery. A droid had arrived pushing a serving trolley with her meal, and following behind it was the man who had made this all possible. She'd not seen him since just before her surgery, through a glass viewing pane of the lab.

Before the droid could get within twenty feet of her, Emryc stopped the cart with a hand and turned his attention to the slip of a woman in the bed.

"Can you walk."

 

[Beatrice Govan]

In the aftermath of that fateful dinner, it hadn't been the matter of the procedure that played upon Evelynn's mind but rather a reconsideration of the heavy consumption of wine in social settings. A major surgical endeavour with cutting edge technology was practically a walk in the park, she was the Queen of bodily trauma and as such could only see the potential to walk again as a boon.

But such sloppy and uncouth conversation, that the woman could not abide by.

She had doom-scrolled through the archive of processed text-to-speech commands, observing typo-ridden familiarity and quasi-flirtatious banter with a degree of horror. There was nothing there of true scandal or merit, but it was so painfully human. So... so...

...so Barbara.

Evelynn did spare a few thoughts towards her personal trainer, who no doubt was left mystified by the disappearance of her angriest customer but those thoughts were fleeting and soon irrelevant.

The surgery came and went without issue.

There was an awareness in the back of the woman's mind through the entire process, a pondering paranoia of potential danger. A side-effect of Sith pursuits. Gambling on trust like this meant that there could have been anything lurking there within her repaired spine. A tracking device. An incendiary device. At the same time, such notions seemed ridiculous, a delusion of grandeur long since passed.

She was not as relevant as her ego would have her believe.

A day before discharge and finally her benefactor showed. Despite knowing him for such a short length of time, his mysterious absence post-surgery felt frustratingly deliberate. In reality, he was most likely a man with many ventures to keep himself busy, but Evelynn chose to take it personally.

Although this really wasn't the time to feel pettiness toward one Emryc Qosta.

“I can,” came words made stark by the datapad as the woman shifted, her legs dangling over the side of the bed so she could show as well as tell. “There is some weakness, I have been assured that in time this will improve.”

With a practised caution Evelynn gently pushed herself from the bed, matchstick legs having to become accustomed to carrying weight once more.

But there it was.

One step in front of the other.

She looked at him, her expression becoming painfully constipated as her brow knotted and lips thinned. Indeed, it was easier to harbour pettiness rather than this gratitude. What an alien concept.

Thank you.

 

[Emryc]

Her figure, standing there in draping white robes like a slave in a ration sack, gave him visions of his past he'd much rather not relive. For a moment the solid granite tone of his skin shivered with a gleam of silver despite the fact that his expression and stance remained as stoic as the stone he appeared to be carved out of.

Emryc released the trolley and stepped aside to allow the droid to pass.

"You will recover faster if you eat what is given to you," the tamber of his deep voice was flat but not quite terse.

Beatrice Govan hadn't proven to have a huge appetite, though any normal person who hadn't been subjected to literally eating out of trash bins could hardly blame her. What passed for a meal here mostly consisted of synthetic foodstuffs highly processed and balanced with appropriate proteins, amino acids, vitamins, and minerals specifically catered to her body's needs for recovery and rejuvination. Cutting edge, but tasteless in best case scenario.

Emryc had, at one point in his youth, eaten the paper wrapping of a fast food throw away just to stop the desperate agony of his chronically empty stomach.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

His face might have been an uncompromising stone wall, but his flesh was not.

In ninety-nine percent of these scenarios, Evelynn would have fully embraced this notion of...what was it? Concern? Disapproval? Disgust? The sickly pallor, the protruding bones, the perception of fragility, usually garnered a sense of either discomfort or pity, both of which were weapons to wield in social war.

Weapons that were not a necessity here. Her brow furrowed.

Wordlessly, Evelynn returned to the bed, her steps still small and cautious as semi-atrophied muscles had to work for the first time in almost a year.

She ate without retort, choosing to awkwardly eat the designed hospital meal plan that couldn't have been further away from the dinner that had introduced them both. The Sith supposed that such facilities didn't have vienettas on hand.

“Is there anything I need to know?” she typed between a mouthful of mystery sustenance, “Any complications? Advisories? Manufacturer's warranties?”

She paused.

“That last one was a joke.”

He seemed even more humourless than her. Somehow.

 

[Emryc]

"Yes," he replied dryly without a hint of humor on his face. Serious, he was being serious.

"The technology used to repair your spine is experimental. There are various side effects and dangers associated with it that the doctor will explain to you when she returns. For now, you will be staying at my tower during your recovery for observation and research."

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Her nose twitched, eyes narrowing in quiet consideration.

Matching Emryc’s serious nature at that moment was simply out of the question. He couldn’t be blamed for taking this all with a certain sense of gravity, he didn’t know her. One man’s experimental spine is another man’s prosthetic nipple, after all. Evelynn Dorn had tasted death itself, having dined at its table for a span of two decades.

It made her flippant about a lot of things.

However, she would, for the sake of gratitude for even agreeing to this endeavour to fix her broken body, not give him any further grief.

“Very well,” she typed and then returned to her meal as requested.

 

[Emryc]

A lesser man might have winced at 'ok'.

'Ok.' was not a response well-received from a woman in most any scenario, but Emryc Qosta held no reservations with it. Not before, not now, not likely ever. Once Beatrice Govan went back to eating, he took his leave of the room.

~~~

"So what is this, are you keeping a pet now?" Zib was lounging in an overstuffed armchair to the side of his desk.

The room in question was his private study. The Lion's Den, as it had been called back on Nadir under the reign of Pa Qosta. It was the room only the people who worked closest to Pa ever got to step foot into ... and back out of. Zib had become his Archie - putting a spin on the Right Hand Man position with his flippant demeanor and penchant for surrounding himself in smoke. Oddly enough, the man's habit had begun to force Emryc out of his own.

Emryc couldn't remember the last time he lit up a cigarette. Quite possibly the night he'd dined with Beatrice. After that the taste had seemed all wrong.

"You gonna just let her roam around without limits? She's a walking bomb waitin' to tick it's last tock," Zib continued, pausing only to inhale more smoke or sip from his tumbler.

"Top 20," Emryc replied without looking up from the health report sent in by Dr. Cortez.
"Oh top 20, so now I have to share my work outs with a dame."
"Are you intimidated, Zib."
"No I just don't like bein' ... interrupted, ya know?"
"More like distracted."
"Eyyy, if there is one thing you and I do not agree on its our taste in women. She's your type, not mine."

Zib felt the glacial gaze land on him with all the impact of a baseball shot out of a cannon. He took the cue and promptly got out of his chair, muttering about some ends needin' tied up.

An alert appeared on the holoscreen to his right, indicating Beatrice's first physical therapy session in the gym on the fifth floor. He stared at the note for several moments, the line of his jaw drawing and waning, then stood and stepped into the lift.


Fifth Floor

This was not the same type of physical therapy that Beatric Govan had been undergoing with her beloved Barbara. This was high tech - no, mega tech. Diodes had been attached to her spine and tracked along her legs. There was no support system such as rails or handholds along what amounted to an American Ninja Warrior course inside the massive gym.

"Over the next few days you will progress from stage 1 to stage 3," indicated her Therapist, "stage 1 is flat platforming to rebuild your strength, stage 2 adds height to rebuild your balance, stage 3 combines the two to adjust coordination. Any questions?"

 

[Beatrice Govan]

The passing couple of days felt strangely insular and introspective, as if what Evelynn needed was to spend more time in self-inflicted isolation with her thoughts.

It wasn't as if she couldn't go for a wander, oh, on the contrary, there were twenty whole floors to explore. Was it an invitation to go look, poke her nose in at the goings-on of Emryc's definitely, one-hundred percent above board life? Who could even tell?

He was as mysterious now as he had been at the start of that dinner. Even more so, perhaps. Frustrating. Broody. Aloof.

Was this how all people were? Annoying? Or was it just him? The woman didn't know if she wanted to slit his throat or try to get to know him better. Was this the human experience that Evelynn had been missing out on for all these years? These interactions paradoxically felt like something insignificant that had to be scrutinised and replayed.

There was a lot of pacing (hobbling, really) and ruminating over everything that had lead to this point. Dutifully eating meals while considering every shred of overly sentimental thought that decided to drift past.

She had sat, stretching and massaging liberated legs, staring at them with feelings of relief washing over her back like scalding water. A part of her loathed it in knowing of who she once was; a woman who would have cut off her own legs just to push the boundaries of torment-laden ecstasy. She wanted to grab somebody and scream into the bowels of their mind:

I could make you feel things that would change you.

But recollections of who she once was rang hollow. It wasn't her, not now. She couldn't even remember being that person, or how it even felt. Like they were someone else's memories and that she was merely masquerading with the face of Evelynn Dorn. She felt like a different person.

Like Beatrice Govan.

---

When the first session of physical therapy arrived the notion of being Beatrice Govan suddenly became a terrible thing as she surveyed the imposing obstacle course before her with a feeling of absolute dread.

Regardless of personal identity crisis and metaphorical face-wearing, the woman had never been a creature of physical prowess. She had a Talith for that, key-word, had. When Darth Adekos had attempted to train her in lightsaber combat he seemed at times as if he was going to give up and drown her in a puddle to save everybody's time.

This was not weightless faffing about in a swimming pool with middle-aged gossips! This was a Force damned trooper gauntlet!

Evelynn's head turned to the therapist slowly in an incredulous fashion.

“What if I can't do it?” her device questioned, the words being said out loud forcing the blonde to inwardly retch at how pathetic they sounded.

 

[Qora Tel Alam]

"That's hardly a winning attitude."

The svelte tone of a woman's voice cut through the expansive nothingness that hung above the gym's obstacle course. Evelynn would recognize Dr. Cortez where she stood, black on black on black with those strangely inhuman, electric eyes watching. Round and penetrating. Cortez walked to the edge of the platform on which she perched, her black robes gently swaying in time.

"My spine you're wearing will do its job just fine. All you have do is ... let it." The details of her new spine hadn't exactly been divulged to her yet. Experimental technology was about as far as anyone had got. The doctor offered a smile which was equal parts human and not at the same time.

"It must learn with you, but it will also learn faster than you. Given this planet's higher gravity and my concoction of supplemental stimulants, you should be able to clear this course in no more than three days."

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Evelynn’s brow crinkled as the notion of a winning attitude entered the gym. It felt like such a blatant affront to her entire existence. She wasn’t a winner, and she wouldn’t have even been here if she was.

Still, the Sith mentally grabbed any swelling notion of a snide retort before it rose beyond her face and was typed into words and strangled it into submission. Instead, the blonde simply nodded in silence, perplexed by notions of an artificially intelligent spine, a spine that was apparently smarter than the wearer itself.

Was that a dig?

From where she stood, being able to clear the obstacle course of athletic insanity in a mere three days seemed like a sheer impossibility, but then Evelynn supposed that Dr Cortez did actually know what she was talking about, no matter how ludicrous. The Sith cast an incredulous glance towards the Doctor and in observation wondered just how much human there was left in her.

“You’re the expert,” Evelynn’s datapad conceded with stark tones, her mind still filled with apprehension regarding learning spines and obstacle courses, “just tell me what I need to do.”

 

[Qora Tel Alam]

"Well it's simple," Cortez said, her pleasant smile peeling into something most certainly the opposite of pleasant, "in order to do anything one must start with doing something. Wouldn't you agree?"

Her lithe figure swung forward with a nearly effortless movement to drop down to the ground level with the poise, grace, and silence of a cat. A black cat. A black cat intent on walking a path of misfortune wherever it went. Maybe not here.

"One foot," she reminded Evelynn with a slow step of her own, "in front of the other. Hm? Think lovely thoughts." The doctor trailed off, casting her electric gaze off to the side where the benefactor had arrived in all his looming, reticent glory, "Mr. Qosta, here to observe?"

 

[Emryc]

Emryc loomed himself into the open arena, but not much farther than the entrance doors. From there he had a grand view of the entire gym, and despite all the things he had to look at, including some very impressive high-tech workout centers and equipment, a massive obstacle course, and several of his underlings going about their usual routines, his gaze of stormy grey landed smack on Beatrice Govan.

His eyes noted her stance, how her back slouched in a way that a tree once might and strong that had once stood against the onslaught of time and the ravages of life now bowed under the weight of years - which was rather curious a comparison for his brain to make considering he'd never seen a real tree like that in his entire life. He didn't count those grown in pots in his condo - those weren't natural. The palms around the resorts weren't the same, either.

"Mr. Qosta, here to observe?"

The words broke his line of sight and shifted the weight of judgement to the Doctor. He said not a word, but lifted a hand and motioned for Cortez to approach. Upon her arrival, he ignored the sanguine smile she fixed him with and presented to her a holopad detailing a rather large sum of numbers.

"Ohhh, how wonderful, my order's arrived. A day early, too, such luck. If you'll excuse me, I need to ensure the boys don't break anything."

Emryc's eyes narrowed on her, silently accusing the cat that ate the canary (a rather large, unapproved sum) and watched at it sauntered out without a care. The man's broad shoulders sagged briefly under a very slow, restrained sigh. He pocketed the datapad and turned his attention back to his charge. Well, he was here, might as well observe. A short gesture was given to her Physical Therapist to indicate they should continue.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

In OrDeR tO dO aNyThInG oNe MuSt StArT wItH dOiNg SoMeThInG, Evelynn's internal voice mocked in a voice drenched in scorn as she flashed an incredibly strained but polite smile in return. What a treat it was, to observe Dr. Cortez flaunt her flexibility and demonstrate the act of putting one foot in front of the other! Such a wonderful treat!

Evelynn's teeth groaned under the strain.

Then it somehow got worse, the Sith didn't quite know how this kind of forum of potential public failure got worse, but it did. Emryc Qosta, at her service. His consistent glower yet another foot on her back in terms of expectation. At least the smug doctor sauntered off, no doubt to talk down to her boys instead of Evelynn. Every cloud?

If only.

Nothing shifted that weight. She'd felt it before, or was at least aware of the experience of a lifetime once past. That unfortunate other girl. Her first failure in the eyes of her father resulted in a lost voice, cut straight from her throat. What senseless cruelty that would only continue as a lifelong theme. Barbarism for the sake of it, and then he had the gall to be disappointed when she became a lunatic?! She could have screamed...

...well, except, no, she couldn't.

Evelynn looked to Emryc, returning his stare with her own perfectly acrid one as the concept of being personally inhibited by daddy issues sank in. It was so unbelievable mortifying. Was this magical spine also a licenced therapist? Perhaps it needed to be.

One foot, in front of the other.

 

[Emryc]

The session did not go well at all. Nor did those to follow. Much as Cortez seemed perfectly expectant of a miracle, the painstaking effort of watching Beatrice Govan attempt to navigate the course - ney, walk at all - was probably as torturous for him as it was for her to perform it. Despite the atrocious results, he attended each session and stood or sat off to the side to observe. There wasn't much to see aside from the woman's inner turmoil becoming outer.

He'd called Cortez into his office after a week of experiencing the struggle second hand. Siva was kept much aprised of the situation and had little to offer other than it was experimental technology and something wasn't quite right yet. Beatric Govan spent most of her time inside the laboratory being scanned and inspected. Further surgeries on the spine to tend to what could have been the problem only to turn up rather stumped. In the end Siva put it to the fact that the girl's body was adjusting and it would take time.

There was some progress.

Given a walker, she could managed to shuffle her way around from point A to point B, and sometimes C and D. But scaling anything vertical was outright. Not to mention her distaste for the walker in general. Her progress halted beyond the walker.

Emryc decided something needed to change.

He arrived at her room attached to the lab at the hour she would have normally been collected for scans and tests, a protocol droid stepping in with her wheelchair and a parcel sitting on its seat.

"Get dressed," Emryc intoned, "we're doing something different today."

 

[Beatrice Govan]

It was awful.

The first session, the next session, the entire week. A gauntlet of repetitive failure that only served to feed the ever-growing beast of frustration that sat upon her back. Only adding to that weight, her benefactor's constant observation cast new shadows over the proceedings and they only spread over time.

At first, it was just embarrassing, feeling like an invalid every time she entered that gym but every rock bottom had a false floor and there was further to fall.

Then came the testing, the procedures, the theories of what wasn't quite right. It was relentless. Evelynn could have told them quite easily what was wrong, it was her, she was wrong, unsuitable, accursed, defective and yet they never came to that conclusion. No, the ever-irritating Dr. Cortex hypothesised that time was the great factor they were all missing.

The walker followed soon after like a fist to the gut. She had transcended being a pathetic joke to something unfathomably lower.

Outwardly, she attempted to remain agreeable, keeping her hands away from the datapad to prevent any acid spitting. It wasn't perfect poise and decorum, it slipped and cracked with every pathetic misstep. A split second of bared teeth, or a clenched fist. Strangled, tongueless yelps.

Most of her physical frustrations, however, remained private.

Perhaps that was the worst part, those moments that Evelynn had to herself in-between it all. Eternally grinding thoughts like malicious cogs. Sometimes she caught herself staring at those useless, feeble legs, intertwined in vicious fantasies that involved tearing through the broken flesh until there was nought but bloodied stumps.

Nemene began to drift into her thoughts. First at night, then during the day.

When Emryc arrived, breaking her regular schedule she thought the end was nigh. They're giving up now. Surely. She could only pray that something different was an obscure reference to euthanasia. She followed instruction and awkwardly changed into the actual human clothes. They were... agreeable garments, perhaps even nice. Something decent to receive a lethal injection in.

There came no response from her, no quip or curiosity, simply doing as she was told and waiting in her wheeled prison to be carted to the next place. She'd stopped looking at him in the eye a while ago.

 

[Emryc]

There were many emotions Emryc Qosta was simply no good at feeling and sympathy wasn't one of them. Empathy, on the other hand, seemed to come in waves that he couldn't control. Mostly when dealing with people during the height of powerful emotions like abject horror or debilitating grief or agonizing pain. He experienced their emotions on a base level - like reading them in a book or watching them on a holoscreen. They read out clearly to him, as plain as if their lives were given as free media with closed captioning.

Sometimes he compartmentalized those experiences, because generally he was the one causing those emotions to occur. Other times, like right now, he could feel something inside him shift as the warbling, unheard and unseen tunes of Evelynn's literally crippling self doubt played like an oboe with a bend in it. The man felt a manner of discontentment for his lack of care. Empathy, meet Apathy. Something told him his mother would not be very proud, but his mother wasn't here.

Yet let no one say he was a man of toxic nature. If Evelyn was to be his charge undertaking a promise he had made to fix her spine so that she could walk about, well, he wasn't about to fail his end of the deal. Emryc was a man of his word.

The first place he lead her was to the higher floors of the tower - one in particular she'd not had access to before. When they exited, it was into an open studio suite decked to the nines. Marble floors, tasteful gold embellishments. Modern, clean styling, and all the necessary amenities.

"This will be your room from now on, until you've fully recovered," he told her as the droid wheeled her in.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

When the lift she was wheeled into began to ascend the cripple couldn't help but feel that euthanasia was more of a lower floor operation. Not that she was here to doubt the layout of his company's building, how could she as a colossal failure of life have the gall to doubt anything else?

But it wasn't a room with a syringe or a firing squad, no, why would it be what she wanted? Why wouldn't it be an exciting and new layer of emotional torment?

And it was so new.

Evelynn never thought there could be a day where she would be presented a marvellous, elegant suite, decked to the nines with all the creature comforts that one would need and feel undeserving. For goodness sake, there was marble! And gold trim! It should have called to her; a reunion with lost wealth and a sense of grandeur and status.

“Why?”

She didn't understand, an all stick and no carrot life leading to such confusion. Anger rippled up the nape of her neck and wrapped a firm hand around her skull. It prickled, its heat irritating and feeding her frustration further as she typed.

“Why are you rewarding me? I am failing. I am exceeding expectations for failing, and you do this?”