Private Impotent

[Amara Zambrano]

Pienso En Tu Mirá​

There wasn't a single aspect of her life that had gone the way she would have wanted it to, even trying to put the family she was a part of and its entire legacy behind her was impossible given the closeness she shared with her late sister. Her body was weak, born so fragile she couldn't even maintain consciousness long enough to cry at the moment of her birth, and despite whatever miracle or curse had replaced her heart with the hunk of stone in her chest there wasn't anything a second chance at life had given her to make up for that. She had fun for a while gallivanting through the galaxy like some rogue but was shunned by the people she'd called friends and her associates the moment she started getting recognized as someone that even resembled the strand-cast her parents had made when they failed to correct the issues she'd been born with, a startling reminder that she was, despite all assurances to the contrary, nearly replaced with another.

So she had came home, thrown herself fully into a life that she had tried to get away from when she thought she could have some semblance of normalcy in her life that wasn't quite so dramatic as dictatorship and aspirations of apotheosis. Whether it was handling a lightsaber or exerting her will over the force nothing seemed to work - a stark contrast from a dead sister that seemed to have accomplished everything she couldn't. "Friends" she'd made were just servants that had no choice in the matter or people who wanted to get closer to her father, and no matter what she tried there wasn't a soul alive that wanted to be around her if there wasn't something to be gained from it - something she'd experienced before coming home, too.

The door silently slid shut behind her as she meandered into her room, her hands already rustling at her waist while she tilted her hips from side to side so she could slip out of the tight pants she'd been in. Her mother had left a new holo at her bedside table, a captured still of her sister that she knew had been taken while their parent had been dead. A momentary glance was sent its way, a curious familiarity worming its way into her mind at the stranger by the strand-cast's side, but her attention was lost as she shed her blouse once she reached her bed. There, laid out but folded neatly, was the only thing she'd kept from before she had left home: a silk robe made by her mother. She slipped into it before sitting down at the side of her bed, wondering if she could bother some servant to help with her mood - guiltily wondering if the ones she bothered thought of her the way she thought of the people who seemed so keen to try to worm their way into friendships with her.

'Just looking to use someone for the season, someone to keep me interested while I'm alone - no better than them, am I?'

Couch surfing as a smuggler had gone a similar way, a boyfriend here or a girlfriend there that only kept up appearances as long as it meant physical intimacy - then, in a couple of months, she was out the door looking for somewhere else to stay. Hardly something she wanted her parents to know, and something she was rather certain anyone who mattered would love to know in order to embarrass either them or her. That was in the past now, though, and she was in control of her own means - the leverage she'd lacked before - and the bartering chip she always had to use was now safely tucked away, maybe in plain sight but not one she ever used anymore.

"Lira, are you up?"

There was a brief moment of silence before she remembered she hadn't turned on the comm that linked her room with the attendant assigned to keep her room tidied and clothes laundered, then a hasty flick of her wrist that telekinetically activated it for her and a slightly more subdued repetition of the same question with a hint of blush on her cheeks out of unseen embarrassment. Another moment of silence passed.

'Perhaps not, suppose I should sleep..'

There was a quiet burst of static that interrupted the thought before the epicanthix's voice replied, "If you need me to be awake, Amara, I will be."

There was a slight tug at each corner of her mouth, as though she couldn't decide to smile or frown, but decided rather quickly that it was better to just answer the question. "I was wondering if I could bother you for someone to talk to?" She asked.

 

[Amara Zambrano]

It took a while before Lira was at her door, not quite as long as it might've before she moved from the worldship to the family estate on Maena, but the woman six years her senior came as quickly as waking from sleep and crossing their side of the compound allowed her to. "You wanted to talk?" The woman asked once the door slid shut behind her, her brown hair slightly disheveled from having been in bed just minutes prior. Amara, for her part, was now laying on the bed in her robe under a light sheet. "Lira," She asked, motioning with a patting gesture for the servant to sit down at the edge of her bed. "Do you think, if you weren't.. working.. here that, if I tried, we could be friends?"

There was a strange look that came over the Lira's face as she sat down on the soft bedding. It was a bit of a loaded question, that much Amara knew, and she wasn't exactly expecting absolute honesty from the woman either, but it was eating away at her in a way she didn't really know how to deal with aside from approaching it directly. "Are you feeling alright, Amara?" She asked instead of answering, the odd expression shifting to something closer to concern. It was her turn not to answer, though she supposed the immediate sigh she gave was answer enough. "You know why I'm asking."

Lira shrugged, either suggesting she didn't know or it wasn't the point of her question. "You are a very approachable woman, Amara, but you're surrounding yourself with people who service your family as much as you are pushing others away." The Anzat rolled her eyes at that, the silent pout suggesting it wasn't the answer she'd been looking for.

"Yes, Amara, I think we could be friends even now, but certainly under other circumstances."

"Not because you think you have to answer that way?"

There was a pause, silence she didn't like to hear, but it was broken up by an exhale through Lira's nostrils and a shaking of her head in disagreement. "The maid that washes you during the morning bath, you've told her to call you by your chosen name for weeks - today she still addresses you as Mistress. She respects your wishes, Amara, but she fears your father. That, I am afraid, is what answering out of fear, or pressure, looks and sounds like." The two looked at each other, though the Anzati looked away soon after. "You have treated me with nothing but respect, even if you've been a bit of a brat about keeping your clothes off of the floor," Lira added with a bit of a smirk.

"Maybe you don't think of us as friends, or maybe you're afraid of what I think of us as, but at the end of the day we lay in bed and talk just like we're doing now for hours at end when I could be in my own bed, in my own quarters, pretending I didn't hear you ask if I was awake."

"You could." Amara agreed, her shoulders sagging as she relaxed. "But here we are."

"Here we are."