Private I Don't Wanna Be Me

[Emryc]

The fact that the woman saw this as a reward gave him a moment of confusion if only because it wasn't at all what he intended. The stormy blue of his eyes settled on her like a distant hurricane of internal thought, but his jaw remained set for several very long, drawn out seconds. At the end of which he looked away and strode into the living space, "It's not a reward. Clearly things are not progressing as planned," he neglected the itch to pull out a cigarette and strike up - namely because they were in his overcoat, which he wasn't wearing at the moment. The itch was still prevalent.

"I am not a purveyor of insanity. Something had to change and this was the first option."

He stepped into the space between the living area and the kitchen, turning smoothly on his heel and giving the space a cursory glance, "It has been modified for your particular needs of access, but if anything was missed, let your attendant know."

AKA it was handicap accessible and compliant.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

It might have been funny to consider how their minds approached the scenario with different outlooks. He was changing the rat's conditions as a means to garner progress, which was a much more scientific method of wanting to throw the rat into the meat grinder and try with a new crippled rodent.

Might have been funny were she not so damn miserable.

There was a mingling of emotions: a sense of gratitude for a much-preferred living arrangement, guilt stemming from her own idea of not deserving it (despite that being irrelevant) and resentment, because the closer she looked the more she saw the adjustments. Sheltered housing for the sad, little invalid. Force, she was so selfish and entitled. It offered a sense of independence, it might be able to he-

“Fuh!” she croaked in sudden exclamation, silencing yet another chain of intrusive, combative and completely negative collection of thoughts. Even without a tongue and with a disused voice comprised of bitter razor blades it was quite obvious what she was getting across.

Evelynn took a moment just to breathe, tilting her head backwards and shutting her eyes as she did so.

Through the nose, and out the mouth.

“I will, thank you,” the datapad spoke after the brief reprieve, “but I cannot help but feel that I'm the one doing something wrong.”

 

[Emryc]

It was a nice flat, for certain. A place he couldn't even have dreamed of living back when he was a whelp on the streets of Nadir. He didn't have that kind of imagination back then, not when all reserves of mental energy were saved for keeping his wits about him. Surviving. Buying in to Qosta. Now here he was, giving a complete stranger a dream for nothing more than his own simple curiosity.

The why of it all was absurd every time he thought about it, but Emryc Qosta was an honest man and the most honest with himself. He simply wished to know her story, and he'd made a deal. He wouldn't know it until she was recovered. Some might say he was attempting to redeem himself through this random act of charity. Couldn't be kindness - that sort of thinking didn't live long in the Qosta Clan. But really, Emryc had already come to terms with the fact that if there was any such places as heaven or hell in the afterlife, he certainly wasn't getting into heaven.

There was no need to redeem himself for anything.

"You and I have very different ideas of wrong."

Struggling wasn't wrong, it was the purest form of living. Emryc no longer struggled, not like he once did. The reminder of it kept him ... humble.

"We have one more stop." He motioned to the droid and stepped by Beatrice, back into the lift. The droid turned her chair about and rolled her back in. The lift went up to the top floor where Emryc's private shuttled awaited them. Soon they were packed aboard and lifting off into the airspace above the city, then out through atmosphere and onto his ship in orbit above.

Almost immediately, Beatrice would feel a change in her physical self. Lighter. So much lighter.

They boarded his ship, he gave his orders for their destination, then brought Beatrice into the lounge as the ship's engines kicked on. Luxury - he traveled in luxury. Honestly it was all the shit left over from Pa Qosta, but he hated to see it go to waste and he also hated wasting money on buying something he already had access to.

An attendant came out with a tray of caffe and finger sandwiches to set on the table at the center of the room. Emryc moved to a back corner closet from where he withdrew a walker and brought it to sit, ready to go, before Beatrice.

"Try to walk now."

 

[Beatrice Govan]

She digested his words in silence as they continued onwards to the next stop, weighing up her concept of wrong and trying to fathom what the man truly meant.

Failure was wrong, how could it be any other way? Just because they intended to keep going until there was success didn't make every day without a shred of progress right. You didn't just get to try again, you failed and then you were punished. You failed and something was taken. You failed and then there was retribution. That was how it worked, at least for her.

Well, worked was a generous term.

There was a creeping realisation that perhaps her input on what was wrong or not might have been, for the lack of a better term, complete and utter garbage.

But looking at that walker filled her soul with rotten bile and loathing.

She studied him for a few moments, standing there surrounded by his own luxury, getting served bloody finger sandwiches and yet she in her crippled, destitute ways was the one dictating the weight of success and failure? It was arrogant on her part, but then despite being one of the galaxy's biggest jokes Evelynn always had a paradoxically haughty streak.

Fine.

Emryc take the wheel.

The practised motion out of her wheelchair was far easier than normal, a lessened pull of gravity yet another benefit gifte-

Shut up.

It wasn't a fix-all instant solution that cured Evelynn and the galaxy of all of its ills (she very much doubted that it was supposed to be) but it was easier. The absolutely pathetic shuffling from before was now a much more enthusiastic hobble. What a difference the shedding of such a weight made, it didn't feel as if a stiff breeze would force her legs to give way and her death grip could relax upon the walker.

 

[Emryc]

There was a moment while Emryc stood there waiting for whatever was to happen, that he felt a sense of lingering doubt move in over the mild expectation of something better than anything they'd seen thus far. Like an imminent nebulae cloud hovering over the path to your travel destination, that doubt hit crescendo as Beatrice's hands reached out for the walker.

But then she began to move. Not her hapless, stilted muddling, but an uneasy trudge the likes of which he'd recalled seeing on a man wandering naked through the streets of Nadir after losing literally everything, including the clothes off his back, at back alley gambling.

Trudging implied conviction to an idea, and he wasn't certain her idea was one of productive nature but he'd take those small wins. As he suspected, the return to normal gravity after that of 244Core would provide her some relief.

"Good," he said, turning from her to doff his overcoat and jacket, handing them off to an attendant, and settled himself down onto the couch with a deep sigh.

"Two-forty-four Core has near double standard gravity," Emryc busied himself with pulling out a cigarette and lighting up. He needn't tell her she'd been fighting a steeply uphill battle on the planet, given her condition. "We will adjust your recovery schedule and focus on strength building exercises and hydro therapy on planet, with a few days in orbit a week to continue your physical walking therapy in standard gravity."

He was soon surrounded by wisps of smoke, frosted gaze watching her through the fog, "What would you like for dinner?"

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Even when the word 'good' left that man's lips he couldn't help but sigh directly afterwards. By now she assumed that this was perfectly on-brand. Not that Evelynn was one to crow about the power of positivity, especially not now.

She froze.

"Two-forty-four Core has near double standard gravity.”

Green eyes stared off into the distance, her hands tightening around the handles of her walker. The woman's body remained but it seemed as if her mind had returned once more to the crippling void of the Nether. His following spiel regarding schedules was a muffled haze bouncing through her skull and then leaving as she considered ten thousand things at once, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine of them perfectly murderous.

She was made of matchsticks, glue and hatred even before being a cripple and they...they...

No.

It's fine.

They know what they're doing, they're the experts. It was their experimental technology, after all. Their facility, their resources. Their time. Their credits. Their everything. And Evelynn, she wasn't having to pay. It was great. Fantastic.

Everything was F I N E.

When her golden hand released the walker to type an answer it left behind spindly finger-shaped indents of crumpled metal from where she had squeezed.

“I don't have a tongue,” the device strapped to her wrist stated as her stare regained focus and slowly scanned across the room to stare at his stupid fuc FINE face, her expression threateningly blank, “so pick what you want to eat.”

Not that she didn't taste, in fact, interestingly it turned out that there were tastes buds within the throat. How else could she enjoy the earthly pleasures of a Vienetta without them? However, outside of fantasies of being wealthy once more and existing at exclusive eateries, she found no real value in picking what she wanted to eat. The blonde would just take a drip if she could but ah but she had a feeling that Emryc wouldn't settle for that.

“Soup.”

Then she continued staggering about like a woman posses WHO WAS COMPLETELY FINE WITH EVERYTHING.

 

[Emryc]

For someone with Emryc's skills, the veritable boiling volcano of emotion hunched over a walker not some half-dozen meters away might as well have been a holovid horror show on display. A bad one at that. The amount of self-loathing vindictiveness pouring from her person could have choked the room were it hazardous smoke.

He watched her inner drama unfold with a dawning sense of realized humor. This woman was a wreck and a joke - a broken, battered, starved little scarecrow fuming like a third-rate Sith Lord.

"Bullshit," the man replied bluntly, "that didn't stop you from our last meal together."

He didn't need her permission to order whatever he wanted. He was already planning to do that.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

She blinked, head slowly turning to face him as if she was a haunted security droid about to pepper him with unrelenting blaster fire.

This was happening.

He was calling her out. Right here. Right now.

The hand of rage crawled up her back and settled upon the back of her head. It squeezed, causing cheeks to flush and upper-lip to curl. All this guilt and forlorn gratitude for this sullen-eyed, brooding, marble-cheekbone wearing arsehole?! What a fucking liberty!

And you presume that was about the food!? Evelynn hissed into his head like a jet of scalding vapour, her regular communication device not providing the immediacy required for the sense of anger. Please! Indulge me! What other presumptions have you made on my behalf?! I'm sure we could all use the laugh!

 

[Emryc]

There were many things that set the man apart from the majority of scumbags that got their start on Nadir. Some were easier to spot than others, but the one that mattered the most in this particular moment went entirely unseen. The explosive mental intrusion hurt. A lot. And caught the man off guard enough to shift his otherwise stoic expression into something akin to fuck is that a migraine coming on? The man braced his mental barriers, feeling a rise of irritation the likes of which was a mere flickering candle flame compared to the volcano of fury that might've erupted from his sister at his age for the very same slight.

Compared to the boiling fury of the woman abusing the completely innocent walker.

Jaw drawn taught and set like steel, the man lifted the same hand that held the cigarette to his face where he pinched at the bridge of his nose just between the two eyebrows that had furrowed in discontent. Fucking schutta. He wanted to say it, but the words didn't manifest.

Neither did the powers he used to keep people like Beatrice Govan out of his head. He supposed he should have been more vigilant after the voice she'd shared with his mind at their first dinner. No matter, he didn't need to fold any cards. In fact, he didn't even need to show his hand or bluff at all.

"What are you so mad at, Beatrice?" The voice was steady, lacking any inflection of anger at all, and followed by a necessary draw from his cigarette.

Let's just cut to the core, shall we.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Did his face actually move?

Oh! Praise the unending void of the Nether he could actually react like a sentient being! Ladies and gentlemen! Come one, come all and witness Emryc Qosta have three seconds of genuine human emotion! What a marvel!

It felt like table scraps as if this man would poker-face his way through an orgy because the only thing he knew how to be was a dour, little condescending prick. It was in his calm tones, and his reasonable question, setting up a mirrored bunker as to make her feel and seem like an irrational lunatic and him the stable font of composed logic.

Naturally, it only made Evelynn angrier.

It had been a while.

She could feel it in her blood, everything so tightly coiled from her sneer to her fists. That rage, usually a background thrum now the focal point, the forefront, she felt it feed into the machination of her golden arm like a current (that poor walker). There was something freeing in it, powerful. Evelynn had always been an advocate for pain but she supposed those true and proper Sith had a point about the liberation of anger.

Not that she would have been supposing anything at that current moment in time.

YOU! You and your DoUbLe StAnDaRd GrAvItY and your ridiculous apathetic face! Me and my insistence upon complete and utter failure wherever I go! Feeling like a useless, helpless cripple EVERY, SINGLE DAY! The circumstance of it all! Those bloody finger sandwiches! Everything! Anything! I'm mad about what you're going to say next AND YOU HAVEN'T EVEN SAID IT YET!

 

[Emryc]

He was prepping for the deluge that he instinctively knew was coming. Emryc wasn't an old-hat in the world of terrible people, but he'd been raised by those old-hats. Beaten bloody on a regular basis by them. Fed bricks and fists for meals. Had his emotional capability shredded by a man who had every ounce of power over him compounded by a curious sense of righteous catharsis for what had been done to him. The cycle was never ending and Emryc never felt the obligation to break it.

But he did feel obligated to do things his own way.

Years of ruining people's minds for simple information and having his own mental faculties constantly tested by Pa Qosta had given him a high tolerance to pain. He wasn't even sure if he liked pain at this point, but for having known nothing but for so long it was like a homecoming. He welcomed those angry mental words and their angry cactus points on his braced mental fortifications like a bird welcomed wind under its wings.

The pinch of his brow didn't ease up, nor did the cabled line of his steeled jaw.

Cactus points, meet phrik-plated containment wall. Emryc slowly released the cloud of smoke he'd been holding in his lungs during the telepathic barrage.

"Go on..."

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Go on.

As if he was listening, as if this wasn't all going to be some kind of lesson in emotional emptiness where he could stand triumphant at the top of his hill because he didn't give anything away in smug superiority because showing that you felt nothing was better than being a passionate wreck.

Evelynn started shuffling towards him in a manner that was only menacing because of its absurdity. This young, frail thing hobbling like a furious drunk with her abused walker in tow.

Oh, I will!

He wanted her to go on? Oh, they could go on, what did it matter? What did he garner from the long-dead and irrelevant past?

My own PARAMOUR once poisoned me for an ENTIRE YEAR! Keeping ME bed-ridden all because SHE DIDN'T WANT TO SHARE! Her expression grew wild, more raw and feral as thoughts of Nemene Talith were only ever unwelcome here. Do you know what it's like to be so WEAK and INFIRM that you piss yourself, Emryc!? And you don't get to stand up and clean yourself, no NO no, you get to lie in it and ROT, so powerless and HELPLESS.

Digging it up to talk about hurt, as if she were grabbing clumps of her own psyche and tearing them out at the root. Old mental wounds bleeding, their viscera all over the floor of her mind. She stood before him, looking down at his apathetic form with gritted teeth that wished to crack under pressure. A part of Evelynn was looking right down at Nemene right there and then and longed to-

It feels like I'm sliding backwards into that person and I DON'T WANT IT!

 

[Emryc]

The wince of his expression dulled as the words continued in the same way a pound of flesh grows dull to sensation once it's been beaten raw long enough. It made the confines of space within his mind where he corralled this unspoken voice to reverberate with a pinging sense of a migraine. A real migraine. So this is how it was going to be then. Emryc resolved to keeping pain killer stims handy.

Yet despite outward appearances of a man who didn't care, he was listening intently. A right trick it would be to have a voice inside your very mind and not listen. He'd never had any intention of ignoring her - to do so would have gone against the very reason he elected to bring her here. She'd piqued his curiosity, and now he was absorbing every inflection and syllable echoing inside that reinforced communication chamber. The more she spoke, the more he found himself intrigued.

Emryc Qosta could relate to struggle. To pain. To abuse and neglect. It was a language he understood with deep, profound intimacy and one that she was speaking with terrible precision. He listened and he waited until she was finished and then he took several silent moments bereft of any line of sight to let it all soak in. A curious desire to reach out to her struck him - one that a normal person would have used to offer her a steadying hand on the shoulder or perhaps a hug. He knew this cornered viper better now than he had two seconds ago and you don't hug a cornered viper.

Let's be honest here, Emryc didn't hug anyone.

The man pushed himself from his seat and up to his towering height, setting eyes of frigid winter on her like a spear of ice through the skull. He took another moment to take the vision of her in, slouched and withered under the weight of her past and the heat of her anger. A silver-toned hand lifted then, slowly, to curl a single finger under her chin. He didn't grab her but simply lifted it until it rested there in a place of perceived confidence. Straightening out the curve of her spine into something more steeled like his own.

"Then don't accept it. Kill your demons."

She had his resources, attention, and time on her side. All she needed now was a winning fucking spirit.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

It was, actually, cathartic.

This was not a topic that Evelynn brought up very often, in fact on the contrary, Nemene Talith was a topic that she liked to strangle, dismember and hide underneath the rug of her mind whenever possible. Those wicked bones of their relationship had been left, buried under the weight of sand and time. Now they were here at the foot of partial excavation, his eyes the first to catch a glimpse of past trauma.

That rage began to leak away from an unseen tap, giving the woman respite to acknowledge the great multitude of feelings that her outburst had granted. Relief, resentment, regret. Even a sliver of mourning.

Thankfully, she did not devolve into a puddle of post-anger tears. Evelynn was many types of emotional messes, but at the very least, she wasn't that kind.

As he stood up, his comparative height dwarfing her, the blonde felt two things. One, a sense of emotional vulnerability that she was not all comfortable with, given how little she actually knew of him, and two, annoyance.

Annoyance that he'd goaded her with calm reason into venting and that it had, to a certain degree, worked. She stared at him for a moment, her head held high by his own machination; a perfectly metaphorical scene in its own right. His own mystery had just deepened tenfold and Evelynn found herself far more invested in who he actually was.

And how does one kill their demons?

 

[Emryc]

Emryc didn't have to put much effort into remembering the process of killing his own demons.

Deiren thrown from the air speeder at high altitude. He'd watched his body ping-pong off lower traffic until the city fog of Nadir swallowed him whole.

Old Tann with his deathly allergy to corriander and the shock on his face when he tasted it in his lunch salad. Emryc had never seen someone turn that particular shade of purple without already being pink in the skin like a Zeltron.

Shekar the Noghri of the fighting pits. He had particularly enjoyed extending the beating on that wretch through three long rounds.

Ziln of the rival gang caught between the sliding gate of the spaceport galley way and the durasteel beams of the metal framework. The spray of his blood had ruined one of Emryc's favorite suits. Worth it.

Watching Pa Qosta's blood splatter all over his desk from slicing open his neck from behind and the poetic synergy of a bullet flying across the office at the very same time into Pa's second-in-command Archon, straight through his temple and out the other side. The hang time before Archie's body hit the floor had to have been a record.

The list went on.

"Depends on the person," he said at length, withdrawing his hand from her chin and shifting it down to her metallic hand, all glitter and golden strength bending the aluminum piping of her walker like paper. Grasping firmly at it, Emryc pried the hand away to see the damage beneath, "and their demons."

Now he'd have to get her a new walker. He supposed it was good they were headed to Annaj for supplies.

Releasing her hand, his gaze returned to her own, "Still certain you want soup..."

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Her stare followed his hand as it trailed downwards and pried her former death grip from the walker. This didn't help unlock the mystery of Emryc Qosta but instead seemed to add another chain and lock around his box. So distant and aloof one moment then in the next so present and... Force forbid, tender.

He would have been a fascinating case study was he not so embroiled in Evelynn's life, which only left him designated as frustrating instead.

She's dead, Evelynn responded, dealing with the concept of killing demons instead of soup-related issues. The woman stared at her own golden apparatus a second longer, flexing alchemised fingers that held untold potency, all-in-all traded for a pound of flesh. How do you kill a memory?

Snapping back to the more current and tangible, she raised an eyebrow at him, her stare settling upon his but with far less venom. They seemed to have contrasting issues with food but tales of her father and how he had fed the girl her own pet kath hound was for another day.

What's wrong with soup? I've heard it's good for the soul, you should try some.

 

[Emryc]

So stubborn. Not unlike himself. "With better memories," he replied, "copious amounts of alcohol and drugs, or brain surgery. Take your pick." Of course there was always the method of therapy, though Emryc had never put much stock in that. He'd elected to engender a sense of self-empowerment through his various goals and comeuppances.

As for soup and his soul, well ... "I like to chew my food."

POST SOUP/DINNER

Their arrival at Annaj fell quickly in line to schedule, as Emryc liked things to be. If Pa Qosta had impressed upon him anything beyond his abhorrent tendencies, taste for good liquor, and lack of humanity, it was an expert measure of keeping things on schedule. Or ahead of, as some cases may lean. Either way, their first stop was at a high-end suit-and-tailor shop, The Grande Arrival, where Emryc decided to place his patronage now that he hadn't Phabess' skill with a measuring tape and sewing needle at hand on Nadir.

Emryc stood on a raised dais before a wall of mirrors, all manner of flesh and robotic help buzzing about him to gather measurements and offer booklets of colors and fabrics to choose from. Evelynn had the choice of sticking with the mangled walker or a repulsor chair, had been offered wine and hors d'oeuvres as she waited.

"We'll stop at a few more places to fill your wardrobe," Emryc spoke to her in the mirror, cold eyes tracking her progress around the general vicinity of the tailor stand, "and replace the walker."

There was, off among a stand of designer chronobands, rings, tie pins, lapel anchors, and cufflinks a display of very nice looking canes. Ornate, polished, carved, bejeweled - a look for every taste.

"What color for the trim of the Coledere Suite, Sir?" the Tailor, a tall, lean man of slicked grey hair and a clean-shaved face named Julen, asked of him.

"Bea," Emryc spoke up as he shrugged a pinned vest into place, "can pick."

"Ah, yes, Mrs. Qosta is it?" Julen, looked to her and turned the swatch book her way.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

She had to appreciate his efficiency as their schedule moved like clockwork (which was very likely aided by the fact that Evelynn had, indeed, picked the repulsor chair). Sometimes there was no good replacement for having punctual company, I mean there had been time for soup and soul-searching which really made the latter feel somewhat planned.

Naturally, the woman had opted for the wine and not the hors d'oeuvres. Killing memories with copious amounts of alcohol was terrible advice that she felt like taking to heart.

There was an awkward grimace when he mentioned replacing the walker and she swiftly moved on from making any kind of eye contact and onto drifting around the store like a crippled magpie. There were a lot of shiny bits and bobs for displaying wealth and status around here, and if nothing else, it was satisfying to look at.

Bea.

Mrs. Qosta.

She had inherited both a nickname and a husband in one fell swoop. Quite impressive, really. She tilted her head to the side, emerald eyes looking up at Julen and his swatch book, pondering whether or not to correct the tailor before deciding on the more chaotic of the two options.

Tappity-tap-tap.

“Stone blue, of course.”

To match his eyes, of course. Elementary colour coordination, darling.

Then her gaze returned to the collection of accessories for the finer man, both her eye and repulsor chair drawn to the vast array of canes on offer.

 

[Emryc]

Those stone blue eyes continued to casually watch the woman in the mirror, though at this point she was all but hidden by several stands of suits on display.

"A fine choice, Madame," Julen bowed away from her, returning to the silver-skinned man on the stand to hold up the swatch for him to see.

Emryc Qosta considered it briefly and then gave a nod of assent. Far be it from he to take away the choice he'd freely given her to make. He wasn't there much longer before Julen declared he had everything he needed to get those suits crafted. "They'll be ready in two days time. Would you like to have them shipped or will you be staying on Annaj?"

"Ship them," Emryc shrugged into the suit he'd worn in like a second skin, turned on his heel and took several measured strides back out into the shop proper. He found Evelynn oogling a display stand of canes and approached her with the same quiet of a prowling nexu. The canes themselves were a curious choice for fascination and not quite what he had in mind, but...

The man leaned to reach over her shoulder for the cane she was presently staring at. His fingers gripped the handle at the top, withdrawing the length from the stand as though a sword from a scabbard. The weight of it felt good. Felt familiar. The same weight of an errant hammer used to sledge in the forehead of a poor John. Stepping around her, he moved off to the side, flicked the implement through the air to catch it by the body and offered the handle to his wife. Take it for a spin, why don't you.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

There was something about the canes that drew her in.

Solid, dignified and with grand craftsmanship. Those three qualities in turn meant that they were designed with men in mind. Why was it that men always consume that which was fit for purpose and women were left with the flimsy and the pointless?

Society would have sooner given her a gnarled stick more befitting of a swamp witch before a sturdy black-shafted cane.

The one that caught her eye held a remarkable handle, that of a leaping kath hound carved in solid silver. Before she could consider the design any further and how the functionality of the handle wasn't sacrificed for aesthetic it was whipped from the stand by her husband.

She observed him as he tested the heft, an apron away from being a dad giving the barbecue tongs a couple of good test clicks.

After it met whatever mysterious approval system that Emryc had designed it was offered to her. She took the handle in her organic left hand, deeming it important that it didn't just look good, but actually felt good. As if errant jagged edges of metal digging into the soft flesh of her palm would have been a problem. Ha.

Rising carefully from the chair, Evelynn stood for but a moment and simply adjusted to different positioning. A glimpse of her own reflection in a mirror pressed reminders of body language. Back straight. Shoulders down. That's better. It felt dignified and looked a damned sight better than that walker.

Although anything would have looked better than that fething walker.

Obviously, Evelynn didn't burst into a gallop and break free of the oblivion of her injuries but there was an improvement in attitude and posture, at the very least and an enthusiastic shuffle was better than none.

What do you think?

And, if he didn't approve, she could hit him with it.