Private I Don't Wanna Be Me

[Emryc]

Was it generosity or duty?

For however much Emryc Qosta maintained a seething, unrepetant hatred for his elder sibling Aver Brand there was one thing the two of them shared: a solid sense of stubborness in seeing something through because they were anything but quitters. Had the thought of tossing Beatrice Govan back into the galaxy at large before her recovery was done etched its way through his thoughts? You better fucking believe it. The costs for her treatments were monumental, but still just a drop in a vast bucket of resources.

Besides, all this work on her had apparently been good for R&D, according to Dr. Cortez. Two birds, one stone.

The man tapped in his bets, hedging on his knowledge of race and personal experience with fights. There weren't enough numbers input to any line to make a lick of difference to him if he lost.

"Cortez has expressed interest in your arm," Emryc set the datapad back on the table and turned next to the holomenu, "she would like to use it for research. I would provide you with a replacement of your choosing, if you consent."

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Well, that was unexpected.

I bet she would, Beatrice replied, her stare focusing upon one of the current combatants, who had just been hobbled by injury and was in the process of leaving smears of themselves across the arena like some macabre painting. Were these deathmatches? She supposed that space stations were really lawless territories.

At least it offered real stakes.

I suppose I could part with it, she continued as if the woman would be performing some grand favour for the good doctor, a token of gratitude for all of her hard work.

Her tone of voice did not offer any favour to Dr Cortez, who had, remarkably, in her first word spoken to the blonde made an enemy for life. ThAt'S hArDly A wInNiNg AtTiTuDe. Of course, the spine was experimental technology that performed better under a more positive mindset but that was far from the point.

Truth be told Beatrice wanted rid of the damned thing. Not only was it an ostentatious mistake made by the galaxy's most catastrophic Sith but its function no longer fit her form. It was a creation of the Dark Side, alchemised for a purpose and that purpose did not align who she was anymore. She could feel the mismatch in resonance; it was a living miasma of malevolent power and she was... Beatrice Govan.

She'd better be bloody careful, I've come too far to die.

Again.

 

[Emryc]

Emryc raised his brows at the woman at her last words, "Is there something she needs to know about it beforehand?"

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Sith alchemy, hardly the standard fare for prosthetics, she explained, acutely aware of how little Emryc actually knew about her former lives and how frustrating it was to lightly dance around everything, it's essentially cursed, so there's no telling what could happen, really. The Dark Side can be unpredictable at best.

She felt an awkwardness, conversations of this nature hadn't really come up so far. It would have been easier to tell him everything, but Beatrice got the sense that it would only be right to tell him the truth after his promise was fulfilled. So dribs and drabs it would be, enough information that would be vital without spoiling his need for duty.

I traded my tongue for it, saying it made it sound like a ridiculous decision (which it was) and Govan made a face, cringing at the past decision, I was going through an ironic phase.

 

[Emryc]

He could only narrow his gaze at the woman as she described the nature of her unnatural limb. It wasn't out of any sense of suspicion or that she was lying - no, Emryc found that she'd been rather upfront and truthful with him about most things aside from the person she claimed to be. But even that had shifted, he just wasn't sure how. Something in Beatrice Govan had changed and he supposed he would need to wait to find out what, exactly.

What was a few more weeks ... months, now if she was agreeing to this new arrangement.

Sith Alchemy was the topic of cautionary note. The man knew very little about the myriad aspects of the Force other than what he had learned from Pa Qosta. The Force had very little place on Nadir, and next to no place in his present life aside from that trick in the elevator and the rare instance he used it to break minds and extract information. Building his new business empire had taken the front seat of things as of late and he realized he didn't miss those otherwise heinous acts of his former life.

It didn't seem Beatrice Govan would lament the loss of the same, either.

The tongue remark was unexpected and Emryc was glad for the arrival of his whyrens and her pitcher of who-the-fuck-even-knew.

He waited until the server left the booth before allowing a brief glimpse of his inner curiosity, "Was it worth the trade?"

 

[Beatrice Govan]

No.

As it turned out, the gilded apparatus was wasted upon her. There was an entire cursed almanac that detailed the capabilities of her alchemical prosthetic. Frankly, it boggled the mind that one device could slice computer systems, deflect lightsabers, shoot lightning and change into a spoon for eating viennettas.

Not that she'd used it for any other function other than the latter.

I'd much rather be able to talk again, and eat like a functioning person and just be a touch more...

Beatrice poured herself a glass of...foggy brown liquid, her forehead creasing in alarm at the thick texture of the cocktail. Had she ordered mud? Was this alcoholic sludge? Whatever expectation the blonde had held for the mystery cocktail had been snapped in half, thrown onto the floor and then spat on like a cheap, weekday harlot.

...normal.

She glanced up at him, offering a still-befuddled expression as the woman's nose leaned in for a cautious sniff.

Like...cinnamon?

Well, she ordered the pitcher. Waste not, want not, she thought to herself, realising that such phrasing stood in direct opposition to the decadent luxury that surrounded them. The woman took a small sip and tilted the viscous liquid down her throat.

Silky.

Fruity.

Spicy.

Pleasant surprise was now the expression of the moment. Expectations be damned once more, the pričakovanje was genuinely tasty, she wondered how much better it might have been if she still had a tongue. Alas.

Indulge me for a moment, she began as if he hadn't been indulging her for months already, think of something you really want that you don't have, if such a thing even exists. Which body part would you trade to get it? No pinky toes, something significant.

 

[Emryc]

Indulge me for a moment.

Spoken by most other women it would have had a seductive touch. Most women wished to indulge in the flesh or the objective. Beatrice had never given him that impression. Emryc poured himself a glass of Whyrens, slow like, his inclement gaze shifting to Beatrice at this brief introduction of what he did not know to be the first real hard question he'd ever been asked in his life. The golden-brown liquid swam into the crystal tumbler with the purpose and grace of a choreographed dancer. A show to play out that he'd orchestrated time and time again now since his days as Pa Qosta's Enforcer and Informant.

Pa's silver shadow.

Think of something you really want that you don't have, if such a thing exists.

The man blinked, grip of his hand on the bottle inclining just enough to slow the pour to a stop. It wasn't the statement himself that caught a particular note, he'd heard the same sentence with different words a few times now on a few different voices. It was the caveat that Beatrice left at the end, the asterisk on a statement that made it less resonant than it should have been.

If such a thing exists.

Had he finally reached the point in his life that he came across as a man who had everything and wanted for nothing?

Emryc set the bottle down and calmly eased back into his seat, fingers wrapping around the tumbler and bringing it to his lips. At one point he wanted to be the man that wore the suit and ordered the bottle of Whyrens. He remembered that desire well, standing as a Coathanger in Pa Qosta's office, presenting him a suit case with pieces of a fucking model ship neatly tucked inside for him to assemble. Aver had been there in the room at that very moment.

Which body part would you trade to get it? No pinky toes, something significant.

Here he was, a tin of high-end cigarettes in his breast pocket, a crystal tumbler of whyrens in his hand, custom fitted suit, the weight and pressure of various highly expensive weapons at strategic points of his figure, and the whim of a man who had enough money to his name that he could bet an entire month's pay on a single match-fight and not blink an eye if his gamble went south. In a few minutes time the Waiter would walk through those doors of his private, VIP booth and ask them what their dinner selection for the evening was.

Emryc remembered fighting over dumpster scraps with the other Grunts, the fire of raging hunger in his gut and pumping into his veins.

Where did he go from here.

He considered this thought in the deep, immutable silence he was so well known for, and let his gaze wander down to the present match in the ring below. Once upon a time that had been him in the ring. His blood. His sweat. His rage. It was how he made ends meet when they were parsecs away from coming close.

What did Emryc Qosta want?

"Your dinner selection for the evening Sir and Madame?" the Waiter's voice cut through his ruminating like dull scissors through canvas. He placed his order, waited for Beatrice to place her own, and settled an unnerving stare on the woman as the Waiter took his leave.

"Are you having a go at me?"

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Emryc Qosta did not, in fact, come across as a man who had everything and wanted for nothing. He, actually, came across as a person who wouldn't answer a question properly unless it was laden with caveats and regulations.

At least to Beatrice Govan.

As the man internally went through the seven stages of daddy issues the woman chose to look down upon the sterilised violence. The hobbled combatant had found a second wind, defying the limits of his physiology and embracing his pain. What sensation. It skulked up through the air and onto the glass, like the breath of an old lover. Evelynn closed her eyes for a moment, allowing the shared moment to linger upon her skin.

Not now.

She ordered after him but both the fight and the food had taken a backdrop as suddenly the woman found herself facing an unnerving stare and confrontational question. Govan blinked, casting her gaze to the side for a moment as confusion gripped her.

I...

What conclusion had he just reached and how? This was a momentous quantity of overthinking for a daft hypothetical. She looked back, raising an eyebrow and leaning forward.

...please elaborate.

 

[Emryc]

Emryc Qosta stared at Beatrice Govan with the unblinking edge of a man who was simply a blink away from putting a bullet between her eyes so he could eat his meal in peace. He might've done it for the burbling amount of entropy presently stirring in his head, but he realized well enough that Beatrice's silence would in no way effect the train wreck she'd created there.

The stare lasted, silently and mercilessly, for several long, drawn out moments. Long enough that the nictitating membranes of his eyes flickered across them since he refused to blink. Emryc felt his jaw set and his spine grow rigid, the cable cord of a bridge bracing against the gust of inclement winds, then suddenly sprung from his stare with a sharp blink and stood from his seat.

"Stay here."

And without a word he promptly exited the room, leaving her to her own thoughts.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Was he broken?

Elbows on the table she continued to lean forward until the table stopped her most cautious, curious advance. He wasn't even blinking. This was truly spectacular, so spectacular in fact that it almost eclipsed the infernal contempt building within her due to the fact that Emryc Qosta couldn't answer a silly, non-consequential hypothetical without encountering a fatal error.

And then he just left.

Her head swivelled, jaw agape as her head traced his swift and sudden exit.

Beatrice wasn't entirely sure that he was coming back. It would have fit perfectly into his predictably unpredictable schedule of hot and cold. Let's go confront your past at a moment's notice so you can make peace with it. Oh, but also when are you moving on, we're nearly done here. Goodbye. Quite frankly, the woman was stunned and simple sat for a few elongated moments just staring at the door in complete astonishment.

Then her jaw set, nostrils flaring, brow creasing.

No.

She refused to sit and ruminate on whether or not he was coming back.

She was going to drink her pitcher of delicious brown mystery and watch gratuitous violence from the lofty, disconnected heights of the VIP bubble. Maybe she'd eat both of their meals. He could go and kark himself, twice over in fact.

 

[Emryc]

Ten minutes ticked by.

Fifteen.

A plate of assorted gourmet appetizers found their way to the table. A second drink for her.

Twenty.

The waiter brought Beatrice's meal. Just her's.

Thirty.

Emryc thus far had won four out of five bets. The numbers on the datapad were gaining zeros.

Forty.

Beatrice was offered top shelf wine.

Forty one.

Forty two.

Forty three.

Forty four.

Exactly forty five minutes later Emryc returned to the VIP bubble with a cigar in one hand and a limited edition Whyren's bottle in the other. The cigar was about halfway spent and several glasses had been poured from the bottle. He moved to the table, topped off his tumbler without a word, stoppered the bottle, and sat down. A low, long, deep sigh spilled cigar smoke from the man's nostrils in the same fashion that a locomotive having hauled uncounted tons of valuable ore might when it reached its destination. Locomotives knew not to feel any sense of achievement because in the morning it was simply back to the grind.

"Mr Qosta, are you ready for your meal?" the Waiter asked from the doorway.

Emryc glanced over at him, blue eyes steely in the saturated illumination of the room. He nodded once.

"Right away, Sir."

He watched him go and then, for the first time since entering the room that evening, Emryc cast a gaze about their present surroundings. So this is what it felt like to own an entire fucking space station.

How disappointing.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Beatrice made a stalwart attempt to indulge in delicious brown mystery and gratuitous violence but only made up to the appetisers before the seethe started to set in.

Had he really upped and left her, just like that? Or was he coming back but merely incapable of making a simple statement. Stay here, I'm going for a shit. Five extra words. How hard would that have been? Oh, for anybody else it would have been normal, the standard but for Emryc bloody Qosta it had to be a mystery.

Her frustration had not damped her appetite, and so the pretentious gourmet fare that resembled concepts of flavour more than actual, real food got thoughtlessly devoured one-by-one by a mouth that didn't even stop to appreciate the flavours and then washed it down with spiced pudding drink.

Somewhere, an executive chef started to cry.

Was this his idea of moving her on? Ditching her at a restaurant so the waiting staff could witness her mortification and gather together in the kitchens to speculate about the abandoned woman in the VIP suite?

When her meal came alone, that's when Beatrice was sure that he had gone.

So what now?

Well, for a start, eat the bloody food because there was a strong chance eating wouldn't be this good for a while but then again, even that had been ruined. It had felt as if so much had been building towards this meal like it was a significant moment but now it was washed over by a wave of asperity that coated the entire dish in a bitter film.

Her inner fury brought forth a sense of urgency for 'her next move' that was swiftly undone by the ferocity of her drinking. The pitcher. The refreshment. Then the wine that came soon after. It sent the anger spiralling, giving tension and harsh lines to sinew that threatened to snap under the weight of the emotion. A flushed face with wide eyes, distended whites like a corned prey animal staring at an unseen predator, chest heaving with forceful breaths that matched tempo with rancid thoughts.

Questions stopped and became statements.

This was a joke, she was a joke. There was no renaissance. No second chance. Beatrice Govan was a farce, an act of theatre performed upon rotten foundations. She'd never be normal, she'd never live a life worth living. This was a cycle, an endless loop of false dawns and ruthless truths. Still broken, lunacy-destined. It had to stop. Just stop. Stop TRYING. TO. CHANGE.

It was hereditary.

IT WON'T GET BETTER.

Inevitable.

YOU CAN'T GET BETTER.

This is why Evelynns need Nemenes.

You're a mistake. You're a failure. You're pathetic. You have nobody. You are NOBODY. WORTHLESS. EMPTY.JUST GIVE UP.NO HOPE. DIE. ALONE.DIE. DIE.JUST FUCKING D I E .

Crack.

She sat, golden instruments of her right wrapped around the index finger of her left, the digit pulled back until it had snapped and was touching the back of her hand. Maw agape, eyes squeezed shut, the lines of her face etched in concentrated vigour.

Shhhhhhhh.

Like an old friend the pain comforted her, reverberating throughout flesh and leaving prickled skin and standing hair in its wake. Quickened breaths filled the silence like post-bliss in an empty hotel room. Evelynn pulled the finger back into place, giving the snapped phalanx a squeeze in fear that she would once again lose that centre.

Emryc returned and she folded her arms upon the table, hiding the physical evidence within the crook of her elbow. She opted to avoid looking at him and instead focused her attention back down to the arena, just the way he had left her.

Like she ceased to exist when he wasn't around.

Where did you go? Dorn asked in a sedate hush, no doubt the soporific effects of wine and a good meal.

 

[Emryc]

There was something undeniably different about the voice in his head. As someone who had become increasingly familiar with Beatrice Govan's inner notes, Emryc was a quick sniff on the shift of scent, so to say. The man cast calm glance her way before ashing his cigar in the table tray.

"To test a theory," he responded in kind, sedate and quiet while fists flew and blood streaked across the sand arena below. He'd not even bothered to look at his gambled earnings for the night, at this rate it didn't matter - he'd not make back on tonight's fights what he'd spent on the evening's meeting with the previous brains of the outfit behind WHSKSTTN.

"I thought maybe I wanted a space station," the man swirled the gleaming golden liquid in his tumbler before taking a light sip and impressing a wince of distaste at his theory's results, "turns out I didn't, but now I have one."

The cigar lightly pinched between pointer and middle finger gestured vaguely to the station around them. Emryc Qosta leaned into his seat, a man wholly disengaged from the fortunes of money he'd just spent. He hadn't had any need to give up a hand or an eye or his tongue for a space station, turns out the owner was a woman after fast profit and faster escape. A convict on the run looking to retire. Looking to get that last thing in her life she really, really wanted but didn't have. He envied her that clarity.

And not just one station. Oh no. There were five.

Five whole stations roaming the galaxy much like this one, themed after various explicit and illicit desires one had to dig real deep and know a lot of names to find. A roving cornucopia of outlawed fantasy mines with names equally as shitty as W H S K S T T N.

"Why did you burn down your childhood home, Beatrice?"

 

[Beatrice Govan]

So that was his reason, he had purchased W H S K S T T N.

Where the woman usually would have looked at him as if he were touched by lunacy, she remained fixated upon the arena below, a thousand-yard stare barely registering the unrepentant violence that took place below their feet.

It would have seemed that they were alike in some respects; an inability to cope with specific scenarios. His, amusing hypothetical icebreakers and hers, well...

Catharsis.

Even if burning down literal interpretations of the past was completely fucking meaningless at the end of days.

She shifted in odd motion within her chair and pressed the broken finger further into the crook of her elbow, feeding off the duet of sharp torment and the dull, hot throb. Like a vital organ, it sustained her, offering a sense of calm in the wake of the storm's destruction. Something to focus upon and keep the woman level lest she threw herself from the bubble and allowed her neck to break the fall.

Would you burn Point Nadir to the ground?

Evelynn continued staring out and down, at nothing and at everything all at once.

 

[Emryc]

Catharsis was a boring answer. Somehow, Emryc had expected more. Beatrice had proven to be many things so far, and boring wasn't one of them.

Would you burn Point Nadir to the ground?

A question he'd been asked many times before. She wouldn't catch him off guard with her hypotheticals. Not this time. His gaze remained fixated in the direction of the windows, but he wasn't watching the fight anymore. Instead he was focused on the people sitting around the stands. His people now. His customers. His constituents. He would need to get to know them, find out what drew them here, what made them tick. Unfortunately that was time he didn't have. Someone else would have to do the leg work.

Wasn't his job to do it anymore. Now he was Pa Qosta. Now he called the shots. There was nothing else that could remind him of this more than walking into the office of Mireau Monchant and watching her eyes pin at the name. Qosta. A name he hadn't forged into the likeness that could make complete strangers stutter. The edge had already been made and set by his predecessor, but it had grown dull over the years. Now Iit was up to him to hone it.

"The notion has crossed my mind a few times," Emryc admitted dispassionately, "I even had an opportunity to do it."

He remembered with great clarity the vision of Pa's tower gone up in flames like a fucking torch in the sky. In the heat of the moment he'd also felt catharsis, felt his revenge grip him like a junkie clutching a fresh hit as the adrenaline pumped through his veins. The chaos that fire would have made for Aver - Emryc could only hope it took her longer than she would have liked to set everything straight. Get all her puppets back in line.

Looking back, the fire had been petty and immature. Breaking big sister's toys out of spite. What difference would trashing the entire playground have made? None. He should have just left quietly and put it all behind him. Except he couldn't and he hadn't.

"Burning it accomplishes and defines nothing. I would rather overshadow it with something of my own making."

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Is that a slight? Voice still, like the seconds after asphyxiation.

It was difficult to tell if his answer was purposeful or if it was ignorant. Her head turned to face him, the motion feeling strange and unnatural as if she'd slept crooked upon her neck. Stare appraising, lingering along with strong, rigid angles and trying to find a sense of clarity.

Perhaps Emryc Qosta was not one to think about others. Born of misfortune, raised selfish, becoming selfish, staying selfish. Made him granite, made him successful, made him impossible to love. He did not think nor did he communicate, because he did not know that he should. Solitary by design, soul fortified to keep others out by turrets of pointed silence and a moat filled to its shores by staunch aloofness. From an outside perspective, all he had was Zib and an unending conveyor belt of cigarras.

Or perhaps not.

Evelynn sneered as she pictured the overlay of another atop his marble features. Cruelty atop cold, orange upon blue. She pondered if everything he said was weighted as if he'd spent this entire time getting to know the woman as means to pick her apart. Nothing said and nothing done without a purpose, chipping away until there was nothing left but broken, malleable flesh.

To what end? She closed her eyes, allowing her world to tilt in the blackness as the alcohol caught up. Numb.

Do you enjoy hurting me?

 

[Emryc]

"Are you slighted?"

There was something strange going on with the woman aside from the shift of her internal voice. Normally Beatrice was an easy read, but now it felt like he was getting a whole lot of static. Sludge. She must have really hit the booze hard while he was gone. Emryc made a mental note to that point.

The waiter arrived just before she could respond with Emryc's meal on a cart. A plate beneath a domed gleaming silver cover which was set before the man on the table. Along with the cart another covered tray set before Beatrice, "Mr. Qosta inferred that you liked desserts," said the waiter as he pulled the cover from Beatrice's plate first, "a sampler of our many fine desserts to choose from." Gourmet desserts in miniature.

Emryc cut into his dinner without any preamble; seared sirloin with a savory red wine glaze. The waiter refilled glasses of water and provided Mrs. Qosta with a topping off of her wine glass and a fresh bottle of wine. He left with a word that he'd be back to see what she choose in a short while.

"I take no enjoyment in hurting anything," Emryc answered her second question at length. Inflicting pain was something he was skilled at but not something he ever enjoyed. Hurting others was a means to an end, and only done so with purpose. He could and would as easily cut off Beatrice Govan's finger as he had his own mother's if the purpose behind the action brought about the necessary results. In the case of his mother it had been a means of getting a job done because someone above him commanded it and that someone had been the end-all-be-all of Emryc's livelihood.

Now that there was no longer a someone in that position, Emryc could not presently fathom any reason at all why he would do such a thing to Beatrice.

"Have I hurt you?" he asked, if only for the very fact that her previous two questions suggested that he had.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Oblivious, then.

There was a certain cynicism in her that found it hard to believe; that there were people out there in the galaxy capable of being insensitive without malice. Evelynn's experience was acutely aware of those who gave needlessly and those who took relentlessly. Natural predators that only ever stopped once they were dead, mostly.

Just as her mind's mouth opened to bite back the desert cart intervened, the waiter might as well have smashed her face in with the silver cloche.

Why would he have requested desserts if he didn't...

Her face twitched.

Legs turning to jelly.

She clutched her broken finger in a fist, applying pressure as to make the injury sing, its primal wail of pain a point of focus to soothe an array of trivial, human anxieties. It wasn't working. His rampant ignorance caught fire inside of her and soon bubbled up a will within Beatrice Govan to toss wine into his face and scream the fucking house down.

The eye of the storm passed, leaving psychotic repression braving the howling winds of her emotional distress. She felt a mess, like a perpetual embarrassment getting dragged through the streets at the mercy of the vultures. The golden arm came up, elbow resting upon the table as the fingers pinched temples and shielded her eyes from his judgement so that he couldn't see that she was

Why was this happening?!

I thought you were fucking GONE!

 

[Emryc]

He felt a rush of vertigo howl into his head from an unseen source and just as he was about to lift a cut piece of steak to his mouth, Emryc gave pause. The man made of stone with a mind armored by mental phrik-plated-beskar weathered the incoming storm as the proverbial gale of emotions struck with the wailing words of Beatrice Govan's re-emergence into the conversation.

Bracing, the line of his jaw so tight he could have bitten through concrete, the man shut his eyes against her and waited until the deluge died away. Or, at the very least, a breath in the wind. Silvered grey eyes reopened and bore across the table at the epicenter of the waning (was it waning?) maelstrom.

Thought he was gone?

"You thought ... I left you here," he translated, hands with fork and steak knife carefully coming to rest on the plate while he settled the full brunt of his penetrative stare on the gleam of gold hiding her eyes. Was she ... crying? Fuck, he never knew what to do with crying dames.

"Beatrice," Emryc's voice lost a bit of its hardline edge, "look at me. I did not leave you."

 

[Beatrice Govan]

As if she would look at him right then.

Her golden apparatus did not budge and in fact, only gripped upon temples tighter. Across two lives, she had experienced a great multitude of horrors, most of which did not bring her to tears. So why this? Why now? Why in front of him? These were all questions that Govan wasn't entirely sure that she wanted the answer to.

Well, I realise this now!

She felt beyond foolish for having worked herself up into such a catastrophe. Here she was scrutinising Emryc Qosta for his inability as a human when she was just as much the tragic mess of accepted reactions and interactions. Who breaks their fucking fingers because they thought they got ditched at the restaurant?

Eat your meal, she urged through gritted mental teeth, I'm fine, I just need a minute.