Ashin Varanin
Professional Enabler
Imagine, if you will, that you have exactly one friend. One friend who can trust you, anyway; the rest, you keep at arms' length for their own sake, and most of them have faded away. But that one friend, you know her well. You've known her what seems like forever. Your life before her is aimless and colorless when you look back. At some point, you both decided that the next step was to stay together forever, so you got together, and you got married, and you raised a kid together, and you conquered roughly one quarter of the civilized galaxy together at one point or another. Imagine you'd both shared experiences with the deadliest and most sublime beings and artifacts in the universe. Imagine that you'd made each other's dreams come true, laughed constantly, destroyed civilizations for the sake of an insult to each other.
This might be hard to imagine. This experience is so far beyond the pale of normal life that few can relate. How many people find a partner who is willing to, capable of, and interest in compensating for your weaknesses, enhancing your strengths, and sharing the prices and glories of your ambitions? Can you understand what it's like to teach your friend everything you know, lose it all, and be taught everything by her in turn?
Personally, I doubt it.
And as for that state of mind...
The Vagrant's Pride drifted half a parsec from anything inhabited, and she was the only living thing aboard, surrounded by a miasma of uncontrolled Force Drain. Her addiction had stolen her redemption years ago, stolen her future. She'd consumed the minimal life of the bacteria onboard as the death field expanded. Of the curios and trophies left in the ship, none were alive. Few were intrinsically valuable, but they were nearly all she had with which to barter. And one woman in one freighter couldn't make a dent on Selvaris.
Though she'd changed bodies since, she still ran a thumb down her chin sometimes, where one of her Vongshaping scars had been. There'd been others, and implants that had been buried with her old self. The memories outlasted the marks, and she knew intimately -- as intimately as she'd ever known Spencer -- what kind of pain her wife might be experiencing on Selvaris. The Dark Side burned cold in her, colder than she'd allowed it in a long, long time.
She'd thought about this kind of situation. They'd come close more than once. But it had never gone this far, and it might take her farther than she'd ever gone. That should have scared her, but sitting in deep space, surrounded by parsecs of hard vacuum and a full-scale death field, the fear didn't even register. Fear was for people who had no reason to embrace death when it came.
And after all, she'd sworn to the Five that she'd die before her time.
This might be hard to imagine. This experience is so far beyond the pale of normal life that few can relate. How many people find a partner who is willing to, capable of, and interest in compensating for your weaknesses, enhancing your strengths, and sharing the prices and glories of your ambitions? Can you understand what it's like to teach your friend everything you know, lose it all, and be taught everything by her in turn?
Personally, I doubt it.
***
In the galley of the freighter Vagrant's Pride, Ashin wore the Crown -- the strongest shield talisman in history -- and thought about death. Her fingers moved of their own accord, leading her through a list on her datapad. Favors untapped, caches undisturbed, options unexplored, friends half-forgotten. Force, but the list was short. Clean, simple -- her current frame of mind wouldn't let her dwell on the potent web of regrets attached to many of the items on the list, and many more things that should have been on there too. No, this list was almost fatalistically simple. She was, after all, poor, though that condition was mainly of her own making, along with most of the regrets. And as for that state of mind...
The Vagrant's Pride drifted half a parsec from anything inhabited, and she was the only living thing aboard, surrounded by a miasma of uncontrolled Force Drain. Her addiction had stolen her redemption years ago, stolen her future. She'd consumed the minimal life of the bacteria onboard as the death field expanded. Of the curios and trophies left in the ship, none were alive. Few were intrinsically valuable, but they were nearly all she had with which to barter. And one woman in one freighter couldn't make a dent on Selvaris.
Though she'd changed bodies since, she still ran a thumb down her chin sometimes, where one of her Vongshaping scars had been. There'd been others, and implants that had been buried with her old self. The memories outlasted the marks, and she knew intimately -- as intimately as she'd ever known Spencer -- what kind of pain her wife might be experiencing on Selvaris. The Dark Side burned cold in her, colder than she'd allowed it in a long, long time.
She'd thought about this kind of situation. They'd come close more than once. But it had never gone this far, and it might take her farther than she'd ever gone. That should have scared her, but sitting in deep space, surrounded by parsecs of hard vacuum and a full-scale death field, the fear didn't even register. Fear was for people who had no reason to embrace death when it came.
And after all, she'd sworn to the Five that she'd die before her time.
