Private I Don't Wanna Be Me

[Emryc]

In his experience it was only a boon to know what everyday objects one carried with their person could take out an enemy without too much effort.

"I would not recommend Cortez," he offered. Zib was liable to find the assault cute and endearing. Cortez? Well, the woman had some crossed wires in her own make up that made her a loose canon on her best days. The only carrot on a stick he'd found to work with her thus far is to let her do as she willed and herd her within the limits with disapproving stares.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Well see, that makes it the more intriguing option.

Evelynn resumed her circuit around the room with an expression of quiet consideration equipped. Did her magical spine have a fail-safe? Some form of an incendiary device in the event that Evelynn became some great villainous conqueror of assault courses? It was something to think about, experimental technology and all.

Besides, Zib doesn't really have a bottom and I would prefer to leave a welt, not bruise bone. I'm not that vindictive.

She lied.

I think the good doctor could take it better.

 

[Emryc]

And without missing a beat, "Zib will be delighted to hear you have been looking at his bottom."

 

[Beatrice Govan]

I'm not so sure, she replied as her face worked to hide any signs of being both caught off guard and mortified, I mean, your right-hand man enjoying the lecherous staring of your wife?

Evelynn felt acutely aware that their conversation was delving into humorous banter that attempted to smother yesterday's rage and yes, she was mildly annoyed by it.

I'm beginning to think that our marriage is a sham, you know.

 

[Emryc]

"He always has enjoyed a good scandal," Emryc gently placed the piece in his hand back into place and moved on to the next. He was, apparently, not incapable of being playful ... or stoically rueful.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

En route to home, Dantooine

Far removed from scandal and Zib's bony arse their speeder cut through the miles and miles of Dantooine's repetitive grassland.

There was a certain mind-numbing, almost meditative quality about the sheer nothingness of the landscape. One could simply stare outwards, unfocus their eyes and let their mind wander to better, more interesting places. Looking out, Evelynn felt a certain understanding of why that young woman thought her heart craved adventure and left; she had been surrounded by a wasteland of space and agriculture.

Had it not all been so isolated and dull then maybe...

She sighed and moved to check the speeder's navigation, ensuring that they were indeed on the correct path to the old house. Truthfully it was a convoluted path, a journey that involved following a trail with mundane landmarks.

A rock that looked like a fish.

A formation of blba trees that went one-two-one.

A graul bone long-buried that emerged over the grasses.

There was even a small seemingly man-made cave to be carefully driven through.

It seemed ridiculous as if they were following a trail to find an elusive treasure hidden by someone who never wanted it found. Truthful in part but nonetheless frustrating. Evelynn found it remarkable that she could even recall the way, it was as if the way home was an instinct, an unmovable part of her mind. No doubt by design. Absolutely ridiculous.

Eventually, the trail led to a small clearing that held, much nobody's surprise, some rocks, some trees and tall grasses...

...oh, and a dilapidated old cottage, seemingly touched only by the mark of time. Long-forgotten garden. Overgrown greenhouse. Nature was in the process of claiming the building, restoring the order of things to how it should be.

Evelynn decided to sit in the speeder for a little while longer.

 

[Emryc]

His silence for the entire duration of the trip might've been notable if it were any different from his usual silence. Except for the fact that Emryc Qosta was silent for an entirely new reason: mild, untoward, trepidation of the unknown and new. It didn't translate physically - no, to Evelynn he was simply as stoic and talkative as usual, but he felt the difference down to his bones.

Dantooine was far from any holdout of enemies or rival clans. Their itinerary had been kept closely guarded by only those in the need-to-know realm. Nothing about the journey held any amount of danger or threat aside from the two people in the speeder making it. Emryc opted to take her himself rather than schedule in a chauffeur for what he told himself was out of respect for Beatrice's walk through her past, but really it was so no one could see him stare poignantly at grass for the first time.

No one but Beatrice, that is. Emryc was relying on the fact that she'd be too distracted by returning to a home she'd not seen in over thirty years to notice.

Being responsible for the driving kept his focus in check, holding the desire to look out at the horizon and landscape passing them by. Everything Evelynn remembered as being boring a vast and curious new experience for Emryc. As the speeder slowed on the dwindling stone road leading toward the cottage, Emryc allowed his gaze to wander for the first time once he'd slipped it into standby mode. For a few moments longer the pair of them were accompanied by the gentle purr of the engine and then that cut out, too. He sat unmoving for a short while, completely undisturbed by the fact that she hadn't bothered to move either. Honestly, he appreciated the solidarity of being stuck in their seats.

Honed glaciers slowly surveyed their surroundings, taking in the ramshackle state of the buildings and the emergence of nature over the structure of civilization. Everything was a riot of greens and blues and browns the likes of which he wasn't even sure he'd seen in holofilms. Not that he'd watched many holofilms to speak of. It hit him strangely enough that it almost didn't feel real.

Was this what nature actually looked like?

It was a reasonable thing to expect him to say something. Make a comment. State some stupid opinion on Evelynn Dorn's home. Emryc said nothing and, when Beatrice continued to sit there unmoving, took that as his cue to be the one to break the ice. He opened his door and got out of the speeder, stepping into the curiously fragrant air.

It had been a long ride and he had to take a piss, so he left the speeder, keys in pocket, and made his way to the nearby treeline to do just that. Odd way to welcome nature into his life, but there it was.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Evelynn had indeed, incorrectly assumed that Emryc's silence was par for the course and that he too found Dantooine's landscape just as pointless, just as dull and just as mundane as she did. Who in their right mind would have found anything to say about it?

She finally opened the door, letting the familiar scent of the planet's trademark flora waft into the speeder. Almost immediately the temptation to shut the door, turn around, leave and never return washed over her but then...

...she heard him...

...pissing...

...on a tree...

...outside her childhood home.

There was an inexplicable collision of feelings, from outrage to disgust all the way to both shock and awe, but above all there was hilarity. Mirth became her, and Evelynn began to laugh her horrendous croaking tongueless laugh which only devolved into further amusement as the woman laughed at her own reaction of laughter. It transformed into a cackle that brought forth raucous tears until the internal concern arose within her that she might have pissed on the speeder seat if this hilarity kept up.

She didn't know what the laughter meant.

Leaving the speeder with the awkward grace of a one-legged pigeon, Evelynn took a few seconds to take in the breeze that cooled her tear-stained cheeks before she made an unceremonious announcement.

There is a toilet inside, you know.

And with that, the woman and her cane made their way up the overgrown path to the house.

 

[Emryc]

Shy was not a word ever used to describe him, but when that gulping guffaw hit the air there was a noticeable interruption of his stream.

There wasn't a man alive that could whip it out, hear a laugh like that, and not instinctively think it was meant for him. Brows furrowed, he glanced over his shoulder just long enough to see she'd not even exited the speeder and there was no way she could see anything anyway. He chalked it up to the oddities of her personality and resumed his mission to empty his bladder uninhibited.

Eventually the laughter died down and so did the stream.

There is a toilet inside, you know.

"Maybe there is," he replied just loud enough she would hear, and left the thought of a potential Schroedinger's Toilet unfinished and floating in the air.

Maybe there was a toilet in there. Maybe there wasn't. The sorry state of the place didn't exactly inspire confidence in there being any manner of comforts of luxuries still available or working. The odds were long that if there was, in fact, still a toilet inside, that it would even work. Emryc wasn't a betting man.

Finished, he turned and slowly stepped after the hobbling woman, noting that while she seemed to have a bit more strength to her on this planet of lower gravity than the one she'd been training on, the texture of the grass seemed to be something of a challenge. Grass. What a fething novelty. He stepped through it, watching the blades flutter over his perfectly shined shoes, leaving behind droplets of dew on the surface. The aroma wasn't something he felt he knew the right words to describe. While he knew the smell of dirt and stone, that which the cityscapes of his life had been built upon and out of were nothing like this.

He decided not to spend too much time thinking about it, and instead maintained his slow gait after Beatrice as she neared the cottage. Someone else might've been filled with questions they wanted to ask her about the place and her memories thereof. Emryc? He was too busy trying to figure out how he felt about the word cottage and the dilapidated building before him that represented it.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

It was a fair point, not that she would tell him that.

Not one to be distracted by the grass, Evelynn's contemplation turned to the past, one that evidently didn't feel like her own. Her senses connected dots, all the sights and smells were there, resurrecting facts like a dusty old tour guide and yet, there was a certain disconnect, like looking through the eyes of another. She was a spectator in the third person for the soul of a dead girl.

We grew our own food, she stated absent-mindedly, her free hand gesturing to the wilds that were once a tamed produce-producing garden and then over to the greenhouse which was more akin to a tropical jungle than anything else.

Her great fondness for soup suddenly made so much more sense.

She froze up upon reaching the front door, the peeling weather-beaten rust staring in the face like some grim omen. Evelynn never spared much thought towards her mother, keeping her hidden within her mind in what was one part petty revenge and two parts grievous wounds. Her presence would be all over this place, or at least the illusion of one.

Do you believe in forgiveness, Emryc?

 

[Emryc]

We grew our own food...

His gaze followed the gesture to the garden, and he thought he understood what he was looking at. The truth of the matter was that he'd grown up on the streets of Point Nadir - the farthest place in the galaxy from that very statement. Evelynn's family, if that's what she meant by we, was busy growing their own sustenance while he'd been busy scraping it out of dumpsters. The stomach could break down a whole lot of inedible things if you were hungry enough, and the pains of it doing so weren't a whole lot different from the pains of starvation.

Eventually they went away.

Having maintained enough of a distance back that her pause at the door wouldn't find her crowded by him, Emryc stopped where he stood on the overgrown path to stare at the back of her head. Did he believe in forgiveness?

What an obtuse question. It felt like she'd asked him if he believe in art or gravity. Forgiveness didn't seem like anything that needed to be believed in, but he supposed maybe what she meant was did he believe in giving it? Could he forgive those that had wronged him? His father for setting him on this inglorious path? Archon for beating him on a daily basis for the better part of eight years as a grunt? Pa Qosta for ruining his ability to find sound sleep for the rest of his life? Aver for kicking him off Nadir just when he'd had his comeuppance?

Emryc wasn't sure forgiveness was quite big enough for those things.

But he'd forgiven Senra for being late. Zib for being drunk. Cortez for her proclivities. An unending list of little forgiveness. Had it really been forgiveness, though? Or had he really just not given a shit enough to be upset about any of those little things?

"I don't know," he answered at length finally, "I've never been asked for it."

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Helpful.

What would have usually been an opportunity for Evelynn to lash out at his staggering ability to give blunt non-answers was lost. After all, what difference would his answer have made? Emryc's capacity to forgive held no bearing on her own, his definition different, his own grief an entirely separate beast. In fact, the more she thought the more she realised it was a ridiculous question and that perhaps it was entirely true that she pick her words more carefully.

This cottage had been designed for her, every single facet of it. From the backwater planet to the location off the beaten path, right down to the awkward terrain that made it impossible to land a proper ship on the doorstep.

Small, quaint, unremarkable.

Whoever lived here was not meant to be found, of course, that also required that same whoever to actually stay put.

Would it have been so hard to say something? Even a nod to the truth would have been better than nothing, better than how it went. Force, if it had been so hard to say why couldn't she had just left a damned note?

Yo, your dad is a bad egg, so stay home, 'kay? Love you lots. Mum X

Oh no, it was far preferable to pretend to be happy families and live in this idyllic bubble of isolation with nothing more than a fething kath hound for company. It's okay, you get to kark off and play Sith for months at a time, but your daughter gets to grow up as some lonely, socially stunted, stuttering paragon for idiotic innocence!

The seethe slowly consumed, her internal process a rant that only increased in tempo and volume until eventually, Evelynn felt as if she was just standing there, screaming inside of her own head. They could have just burned down the house, it was the best way, the right way but there was something about evading the inner workings of her isolated childhood that felt like cowardice and she refused to follow in those footsteps.

Unfortunately, the door control panel had lost a well-fought battle against an invasive wall creeper and thus rendered the door entirely useless.

Help me get inside, we'll smash a window or...something...

 

[Emryc]

More silence. Emryc stood in it with the same familiarity and composure he stood in a cloud of cigarette smoke.

Waiting with what felt like endless patience - unusual for a man of his breeding, calibre, and station. It wasn't something that had been taught to him or impressed upon him by Archon or Pa, though of all the mob bosses on Nadir Pa Qosta likely had the greatest amount of patience. No, Emryc found that patience had served him well thus far and saw no reason to forgo it here, now, or anytime in the near future.

At her voice in his mind he shifted where he stood and removed his hands from the pockets of his jacket. He gave the door in front of the woman a momentary look of consideration. If he really wanted to he likely could have caved it in, but Emryc was of the work smarter, not harder mindset. He didn't need to have a moment of masculinity for anyone's sake - there was no point to be made by it, so instead he took several steps back and opted for her alternative option: a window.

There was one off to the side behind a row of overgrown bushes. Moving over to it and pressing himself through the reaching branches, he carefully looked around at the edges of the frame. Prairie style, not that he knew that, gave him two separate tall and narrow panes split down the middle to open outwards like a set of double doors. He reached for a large pocketknife hidden within a holster beneath his jacket, likely alongside an assortment of weapons, and flipped open the blade to tuck the tip of it into the center seam of them both.

With some jostling and twisting, the old wooden window frames split under the leveraged force and broke free of the internal hook lock.

The window panes swung outwards to either side, protesting with all manner of squeaking and whining the entire way, dropping paint chips and wood splinters as they went. Emryc didn't even look back at her. He folded the blade closed, set it back in its pouch beneath his jacket, and hoisted himself - expensive fitted suit and all - up into the widow ledge like a teenaged boy breaking and entering for the third time this week.

His shoes hit the floor inside with a thunk and with a short paused to look around, Emryc turned back to the window and leaned out to offer Evelynn a hand in.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

She appreciated his lack of brute force, in the breaking and entering of her old home. A strange sentiment to hold considering that she was having thoughts about burning the place to the damned ground.

But it wasn't his past to burn.

Intuitively, she knew that he would understand that.

Observing him deploy clever leverage with a pocket knife instead, Evelynn tried to imagine what would be inside. Would it be exactly how she left it? Had her mother come home only to find that her sweet, sheltered child had gone? What was the point in thinking about it? They would find out in a minute.

She settled on the knowledge that there would be dust.

It didn't take long for Emryc to get the window open and without a single pane of shattered glass. It might have even been impressive, in a scoundrel type of way had Evelynn not been in the midst of deep-seated parental issues. Although even she could appreciate that there was something juvenile about them, a pair of adults climbing into a decrepit cottage through the window.

After a small awkward struggle and a much-needed hand, she was finally inside, inside to witness all of the...

...dust.

It seemed so small.

There were only four rooms, the living space which was half-cosy nook and half-rustic kitchen, a small bathroom and two bedrooms.

Aside from the general rot and decay that time offered to the cottage, everything seemed to be in order. It spoke volumes of tidy living, not an unwashed dish or a great mountain of clothes, dreaming of being put away in view. Disappointingly untouched.

Upon the wall above the fireplace, an old slugthrower rifle sat mounted. A necessary precaution when one chose to live at one with nature, especially given Dantooine's native fauna. Not that Evelynn remembered even being able to lift it.

Take it if you want, she stated plainly as she wandered over to a well-worn sitting chair and plucked a dust encrusted ball of decayed yarn into her gloved hand. It stunk of rot and Evelynn couldn't help but sneer. Homestead defence and knitting, it was all a ridiculous lie.

Tell me about where you grew up.

 

[Emryc]

There wasn't much to look at, and even if Emryc really hadn't a clue what to expect inside a cottage out in the middle of fuck-nowhere, he found himself not altogether surprised at this revelation. Wasn't that what the holofilms called it? Simple living in the country side? His leveled brow and faint scowl of ... well, he wasn't sure what he was scowling at, but his expression spoke of derision. Emryc had very little experience to speak of when it came to holofilms. He'd taken Senra out to see them during the few years he'd paid for her company. Not out of any desire to go himself, but only because it was what she had wanted to do.

Emryc recalled the films being rather insipid in nature. A life he couldn't fathom, in a dreamland far and away from the shithole he called home.

Now here he stood, central to that insipid dreamland. It really existed. At one point in her life, Beatric Govan had lived that dream. He still didn't know how to feel about it. It still felt completely unreal to him. As if he'd fallen into a stupor dreamscape high on pain killers, still recovering in the medbay at the headquarters. His hands were in his pockets again and he was staring up at the only thing in these four rooms that he had any personal relation to: the rifle hung over the fireplace.

Take it if you want.

Emryc glanced back at her briefly, the scowl leavening from his expression. He hadn't intended to take it despite his curiosity, but if she was offering... The man stepped forward and reached up to carefully remove the rifle from its display hooks. Thing had some heft to it. His hands released the lock to open the chamber - loaded. Hm. Emryc prised the shells out and pocketed them before latching it shut again. Safety first.

Tell me about where you grew up.

Felt his spine go rigid at the question. Felt the instinctive rise to ignore or deflect the needling words and summarily muscled it down with a tight jaw. Didn't like to talk about those things. Personal things. Things that clued others in to his story and all the nuanced weak points that went with it. The less other people knew the better, but that game felt misplaced on his tongue while he stood in the childhood home of the woman that had clearly been abandoned for decades.

"I grew up on the streets of Point Nadir," he responded in a quiet enough fashion that his voice didn't disturb the weighted sense of decay in the house, "and I found my food in dumpsters."

 

[Beatrice Govan]

For a while she just stared into the yarn, silently acknowledging the man's contrasting childhood to her own and feeling a peculiar yet slight pang of guilt at having pointed out the garden where they grew food just prior.

She was beginning to see a certain validity in saying less, which even in that laden moment, was still somewhat irritating.

Flattening her palm Evelynn allowed the ball of yarn to roll off of her hand, and land onto the floor with the softest whump, a cloud of dust echoing out from the rotten decrepit fibres. Perhaps the slightest of mess might have summoned her mother's spirit to impart worthless wisdom on the merits of a tidy home.

It was funny really, how his early suffering had likely steeled him, made him into the apparent success that he was now and in turn, Evelynn's own comfort had been her undoing, leaving her a girl vastly unprepared for what the galaxy had to offer.

Naive, stunted and stuttering.

Thank you for telling me.

Do go on, she wanted to say but decided against it, feeling a certain sense of gratitude that he had given her at least a small morsel of his past. Annoyingly, she pondered if he'd worn her down into that line of thinking.

She wandered over to a comically large clay bowl that sat upon the floor of the kitchen, it was clearly of homemade design and had the name Chomp engraved with a child-like scrawl. Bending down Evelynn ran her fingers around the rim, a trail of dust building across black gloves and for a moment.

A smile, soft, almost happy.

Is it any good? She asked, still bent down, admiring her old companion's bowl, The rifle, I mean.

 

[Emryc]

The thank you went without any verbal response, but he did give her a short glance in return. The sort of glance that considered her words for what they were. Wasn't often he got thanked. Didn't quite know what to do with that. Emryc returned his attention to the weapon in his hands as she moved on from her chair and ball of yarn.

Wasn't good light to give the rifle a proper appraisal, but Emryc had a nose for old-school, traditional guns. He'd been dithering with the hobby for the better part of five years. Didn't consider himself a specialist or expert by any means. There was very little in the way of research involved. Mostly he just liked to pull things apart and put them back together again in a better state than they had been when he got them. This point did not escape him as he looked after the woman presently hobbling into the kitchen.

He had no idea what that giant bowl was she was crouching over. If he'd stared at it too long it would have deeply puzzled him, so he didn't.

"Mm," he mused aloud at her question, slowly turning the rifle over in the rays of light coming through the open window, "it can still kill, if that's what you mean." It needed attention. A good cleaning, a few minor repairs, but it was a simple thing and not a tool of technology. The simple things generally lasted the longest. "Should work just fine once I refurbish it. ...what is that?"

Ayup. He did it. He asked a question. Emryc turned on the spot, hinging the rifle under his right arm while he fished through his pockets for his cigarette case with the left. A nod was given to the bowl she was stooped over, curiosity in his gaze.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

Well, one had to suppose that a rifle that didn't kill wasn't much of a rifle at all.

She relented to the will of her slightly protesting spine and sat down cross-legged on the floor, cane laid beside her likely ensuring that anybody would think twice before letting her dusty trousers back into the speeder's interi...

...wait..

...did he just...

Evelynn froze, staring at Chomp's bowl for a solid seven seconds as mind, body and soul digested the very fact that Emryc had just asked what it was. Perhaps for a second, she had transcended to his oft too literal headspace in the quiet reflection, so much so that she had taken his rare question for literal. He knew what a pet bowl was, he had to, right?

Slowly her head turned, emerald's peering back over her own shoulder at him with a quizzical stare as she held the large homemade dish up for the man to see.

It's Chomp's bowl.

Street kids that ate out of dumpsters probably didn't have pets. In fact, they probably ate food meant for pets.

He was terrible with cutlery so we had him eat from it, the woman continued as if she was speaking about some incredibly simple-minded individual and after giving the statement enough time to breathe she continued, he was a kath hound, and my best friend.

 

[Emryc]

Chomp's ... bowl.

The confusion did not lift from the man's face. It was an exceptionally rare instance of naked expression and if Beatrice Govan knew better she would be mentally recording this moment. What ... was a Chomp and why did it need a bowl? Emryc's brow furrowed ever further at the mention of cutlery. Was Chomp a person? A ... what was the word Pa used to use ... challenged person? Was she attempting to make a joke? Trying to needle at his lack of understanding of this quaint, holofilm country life she'd apparently abandoned?

Abandoned for what, exactly?

...he was a kath hound, and my best friend.

Ah.

A kath hound.

The man's gaze faintly shifted as he tried to think if he knew what a kath hound was. Some sort of dog, but that was the extent of his knowledge of these things. Animals weren't common on Nadir, the place wasn't made for them. Less kind to them than it was to the people that lived there. He thought about this, fingers flexing slightly around the cigarette pack in his inner pocket, and shifted to busy himself in extracting a cigarette and lighter.

The confusion filtered away with the first puffs of smoke, releasing back to his stoic, immutable expression. Emryc did not bother to ask if she minded because, well, he didn't care.

So, it was a dog bowl. "I did not realize hounds ate out of bowls." He supposed he thought they just ate bones and the flesh from the slain ... that's all he ever saw them eat on Nadir. His eyes narrowed as he carefully considered the bowl in her hands, "Is it ... something you wish to keep?"

TWO questions. A man of his very few words.

 

[Beatrice Govan]

What manner of man was she witnessing right here in her childhood home? This man whose features gave way to confusion and who even asked a question or two. She wondered if this moment was fleeting, a rarity like an eclipse that could only be spotted once every twelve years and even then could be hidden by the clouds.

He allowed his apparent vulnerability and his effort to try to pass, and where Evelynn might have usually mocked, she abstained.

This, is a kath hound, she explained, still holding the bowl with one hand and picking up her cane with the other so that she could waggle the ornate silver head in his general direction. Men tended to be visual creatures, and since all the family holo-pictures upon the mantelpiece had fizzled out, this was the best example beyond words.

They're native to Dantooine and are not typically domesticated, Evelynn continued, lowering her cane as she kept contemplating clay, so they do not typically eat out of bowls.

Whether she wanted to keep it or not was a different matter entirely.

Placing the bowl on her lap the woman stared into it as if it held a great black hole that bore insight into the correct answer. Chomp, for the duration of his life, was one of the only constants that her twice-cursed existence ever had. Trained specifically to be both a guardian and a friend, he held a great many traits that stuck in her mind.

Loyal. Slobbery. Smart. Vocal. Brave. Stinky. Warm.

My father killed him, had him cooked, and fed him to me, Dorn explained softly, her sharp features dulled by retrospective grief, he told me after, that I had eaten him.