Private Tunnel Vision

[Darth Daiara]

Cloudy head, dry mouth, empty bed.

Panic.

Zaavik was missing.

Terror.

He had taken their ship.

Anger.


He had finally had enough. The was the only explanation she could come up with as she paced the halls of her family home. The bitter bite of alcohol the morning after weighed her down. She chased it away with coffee and pills until her heart raced like helicopter wings taking off. He had left her with no clues. He was too good for that and she was too stubborn not to follow. He didn't want her to follow. He didn't want her. She knew why.

Shame boiled in her gut. She shouldn't have drank last night. She shouldn't have talked about it-- she shouldn't of-




She could feel his presence close in. A flutter of relief shattered the agony of waiting. She broke through the door and ran to the landing pad. No words were spared for the family left behind. His energy grew clouded with each step she took. She entered the ship before the landing gears could fully settle.

"Zaavik?" she choked out.

The force twisted with his pain.

Zaavik Perl

 

[Zaavik Perl]

Harsh chimes from the console rose Zaavik from a corpselike unconsciousness. Pain rippled in his skull, radiated across his face. Every beat of the arrival alarm intensified the agonizing sensation. The bottom end of his fist abruptly struck the toggle, forcing the edged pealing to cease. Pain-born daze sped his breathing, turned rousing from his seat from undemanding to arduous. He nearly fell, catching himself with an arm against a cockpit wall.

"Zaavik?"

An insidious chill ran through every vein in his body. The cold snap overwhelmed every muscle, rendering Zaavik no more fit to move than a sculpture. It wasn't supposed to go this way. There was always destined to be an argument and explaining to do when he returned, but this wasn't how he'd planned it. At the time, it had seemed so simple. He'd overestimated himself. Determination became hubris, hubris became one less eye rolling around in his skull.

Damnit.

Willpower dominated his limbs in spite of the reflexive paralysis. His figure appeared, slowly stepping into view from the control sub-room doorway. Eye contact. His singleton met her twins in the loudest silence he'd yet to experience. An empty blood-black crevasse surrounded by swollen flesh blemished the right half of his face. Change in light-level from the ajar landing ramp sent thousands of needles skittering across his face and scalp. Initial words were lost in the trench of overbearing physical pain.

All he could do was stand there.

 

[Darth Daiara]

The breath left her lungs.

She flew forward, catching his shoulders and carrying into the sterile infirmity. It was hardly anything-- a shadow of the purpose it had been built for, but it had bacta. She lowered him onto the table, her fingers frantic but steady as she pressed the stem into his neck. It hissed as it delivered the treatment into his system.

"Stay down," she ordered, reaching past him to the ships consol. The flight deck's doors hissed closed. She pressed a swob of bandages to his eye socket and braced as autopilot initiated take off.

She stood over him, ashen and reserved. Her eyes slowly moved to his, horror hidden neatly behind the pain.

"We'll get you patched up." And with no further warning and no say given, the ship shot towards the hospital. This required a professional.

She would take the risk.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

There wasn't any real fight left in him to spare any effort resisting. Instincts roiled in defiance, but his limbs wouldn't move. Zaavik squirmed, channeling the pain into something other than as she haphazardly applied painful treatments he hadn't the stomach to give himself. He almost didn't notice the ship moving through the thunderstorm erupting in his skull.

His lone eye darted frantically once his stomach felt the shift of lifting above the ground. "Where are we going?" he rasped, sitting upward abruptly. Sudden ache stifled his rousing. Once he'd conquered it, he wasted no time trying to get up, disregarding his instruction to stay down. He had a bad feeling about whatever Aradia planned to do.

 

[Darth Daiara]

Her hands pressed down on his shoulders, surprisingly strong as she gave no option. "Stop," Aradia snapped, her tone cold and firm. She painted a fair resemblance to Kaalia in that moment, her expression unreadable and commanding. She was ice and steel. Nothing could reach her.

"We're going away."

If they had brought heat to the family-- it was a thought for later. A hand kept him down as pinged a brisk message of warning to Kaalia Pavanos . Found him. Leaving. Leading off any potential tracers. Stay alert.

The ship's glow cast a gauntly pallor across her features. She pull back the gauze and stared down the missing organ. The blood was tacky to the touch. A few hours old at most.

"Where were you? Were you followed?"

 

[Zaavik Perl]

Strength still bent to the fatigue lightning had imparted on ever limb. She shouldn't have been able to overpower him, but Allyson Locke had driven every ounce of potency out of him. Helplessness was agonizing. Being held down awakened something, made him want to scream, turn hostile. Yet, he didn't have the willpower left. Morbid, forced acquiescence saw him laying back, unable to resist enough to get where he wanted to go.

"Away?" Irritatingly vague. Although, if away truly meant away, perhaps it was a good move. The Core was the last place they needed to be anymore. At in his case, anyway. Weakly, his hand grabbed her wrist as she felt around the wound, wincing from the pain of contact. "Stop," he hissed.

"I wasn't followed." Who could have followed him? After the hit she'd taken, Zaavik was certain Allyson must be dead. She wasn't there when he came to, but her blood trail hadn't washed away from the stone. He didn't follow it, but someone with a perforated kidney couldn't get far. She was dead. Had to be dead.

"I'm fine," he asserted before letting her hand go. He attempted to at the very least sit up. "I've- I've had worse." Not the first time he'd said that, only this time isn't wasn't true.

 

[Darth Daiara]

"Shut up." She snapped again, overwhelming force slamming him back down into the table. That wasn't just her muscles. She was fuming with the darkside, every breath in and out a moment of control she didn't know she had been capable of.

It screamed for a release. What would she let it out on, him?

Her nostrils flared down at him. "You don't get to complain. You don't to talk. You lied to me. You risked that family. You show up, half dead and acting like you're fine? Have you seen yourself?" She bellowed, her voice hitting a shrill note. The force twisted and contorted, bent by her anger.

"Stay the feck down and tell me what happened. Now."

 

[Zaavik Perl]

Pain erupted with the sudden impact into the table. He grunted, a rolling groan shortly following as his hands rose to gingerly clasp his head. Zeltronian curses muttered their way off his lips.

"Have you seen yourself?"

Hardly missing a beat, even in his pained daze and confronted with her anger he replied, "I'm having trouble seeing much of anything right now." Insouciance deflected her unsettling attitude with a refusal to bend mentally as easily as he was physically. All it took was little voice raising to stoke a nearly dead flame.

"I got my ass kicked, is that not blatantly clear?"

 

[Darth Daiara]

She wanted to shake him-- make his brain rattle about in skull so he could see-- her fingers tightened. "And why do you think that is?" She hissed, the pressure leaving his shoulders.

She took three solid steps back from him, not trusting herself with him now.

"Where did you go? What did you do?" She asked yet again, her words barely contained as she gritted them through her teeth. Every moment he resisted put her further on edge. It wasn't just about him here. He could have led the SIA right back to children. He put everything at risk.

"Tell me!"

 

[Zaavik Perl]

"Ebaq six." One of Ebaq's eleven moons. Truth. "I was... seeing to a loose end." Omissive, yet not entirely an untruth. It had a far more delicate ring to it than 'trying to kill Allyson' did. Not only that, but it fell in line with how he'd vaguely described the errand on the previous night.

"No one else made it off that rock but me, so you can stop shitting yourself." That much he genuinely believed. His dismissal entirely missed half the point of her attitude. Batca was doing its job, but the amount of pain mitigated felt like a cruel mockery than benevolent relief. Zaavik cursed to himself and shifted on the table.

"How long until we cross out of Alliance space?"

 

[Darth Daiara]

Shitting herself.

Because her response was so out of proportion to him up and vanishing without a word and coming back without an eye.

Shitting herself.

Her eyes narrowed, her seething anger contained behind two slits as she stared at him and all his self-absorbed ego. Silence stretched, the girl deciding not to answer his question. No. She wouldn't give him anything at all. Her anger was a cover for deep rooted concerns, and the insecurities of being ditched after a night like the one that had just passed.

"You're an ass, you know that?" She threw the empty syringe into his chest and stormed away, leaving him to himself and his lies.

Just the way the liked it.

Partners? Feck off. She stormed her way to the flight deck and locked him out. He would be able to see their destination on screen, but to change it? Only she had that control.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

"You're an ass, you know that?"

Metal fingers tried to catch the syringe, but they only managed to swat it onto the floor. As soon as the door closed and left him in silence Zaavik let his head fall back and muttered, "Yeah, I'm starting to pick up on that." There was no one but himself around to hear it, thankfully. It certainly wasn't an admission he wanted her to have over him.

After a few moments, he lifted his head again, looked down the main ship corridor from the infirmary table. The transparisteel window on the door to the flight deck was situated at an angle that made the navscreen visible. A set of coordinates coupled with the name of a medical center. Zaavik grimaced, he hated hospitals. "I told you I'm fine! I don't need a doctor!" he shouted, still insistent in spite of the hole in his face.

He couldn't tell whether or not she could hear him. Feth it, he thought. They'd work it out when they landed. Yet again his head fell back, he laid in his pain before an epiphany hit. Solitary eye shot open like glass shattering. He sat up light lighting, reread the coordinates with a frantic haste. Those coordinates weren't off world. First-aid kid was knocked onto the floor as he forced himself up and to a window.

They hadn't even left the atmosphere. The ship wasn't ascending either.

No.

"Hey!" Zaavik shouted, staggering his way to the door. A closed fist banged on the transparisteel. "Are you crazy!? We can't go to an Alliance medical center! That's pretty high on the list for the worst places to take a fugitive!"

 

[Darth Daiara]

Aradia sat slouched in the nav chair, eyes glazed over as she stared at the screen.

"That didn't stop you this morning," she uttered, barely audible through the door. If he wanted her to turn heel or open up, it would take a lot more than that.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

"What does that even mean!?" He'd gone to a featureless rock with an atmosphere that was just barely breathable for near-humans. Not quite the same thing as a public place with access to databases and medical records.

"You're gonna get us both caught up!"

 

[Darth Daiara]

"Stop shitting yourself, we're going to get you patched up, not fingerprinted." For all the cruelty in the choice of words, her voice was monotone as she plucked at the screen.

She was ice. She was steel. She was ice.

She was aggravated. Electric sparks passed from her finger to the screen.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

Words sputtered. Yeah, he probably deserved that, but it didn't change the fact she was practically hand-delivering him to the SIA. "Balmorra is already-! Are you-!?" A deep, inarticulate noise of frustration bellowed from his chest. Both hands slapped flat onto the door, making a sound that scrambled his head even further. Face nearly pressed against the transparisteel, it fogged in an out with his breath.

"I don't need a doctor," he reiterated insistently. "Even if I did, going to any med-center in Alliance space would be like walking into a rat trap." How did this not occur to her? Maybe she didn't care. Had he pissed her off enough for her to take him down with her? Zaavik wanted to say it wasn't so, but her attitude and actions weren't giving him confidence.

An idea floated into his head. A glance toward the emergency cabinet expected to see folded space suits and parachutes. Only spacesuits. Snap back to the window. The missing parachutes had been discarded haphazardly onto the co-pilot seat. She knew him better than he wanted to admit. Lack of an escape planted several ideas into his head. A few of them weren't pretty.

Crushgaunt functions in his hand activated with mental sensation. Quietly, he slipped his fingers between the door and the frame at the very top. "Aradia," he began, feigning calmness. "Open the door. Please."

He was ready to tear it down.

 

[Darth Daiara]

"I said stop." Her voice rattled inside his head, thick in the force as she turned her head. Veins of black crawled up her neck, stretching for her eyes.

The blue had begun to bleed out.

The words, while demanding, had an edge of a plea to them. She had not put a ship and a two ton metal door between them for nothing. She was not quite herself. She stood, fabric brushing as she stepped towards the door he was prepared to crush. Her gaze burned through him, just as the empty eye socket bored a hole through her.

"Do you have any idea what it is like ... to wake up and find the person you love gone? No warning. No note. And to spend the day, the whole day, with nothing. Helpless. Waiting. You had either left me.

"Or were dead."

She stepped up to the window, her breath fogging it as she stared at the planes of his face through the scuffed up material.

"Do you know how that feels?"

 

[Zaavik Perl]

"I-"

Silence. He'd known exactly what he was doing when he slipped away. Of course she was going to be upset, especially since she though she was going too. Although, he hadn't expected this kind of reaction. The severity of all of this had been drastically underestimated. There were aspects and nuances to it that he hadn't considered. It didn't occur to him she'd draw those conclusions.

Intensity in Zaavik's eye died, softening into a crestfallen guilt. He took a small step back from the door, brow raising downheartedly. Metal fingertips lingered on the transparisteel, slowly sliding downward. "I didn't mean to-" He couldn't finish his sentence before a jumble of excuses reflexively materialized in his mind. Instincts told him not to give any ground, to save face, not to bend.

Don't bend.

Don't bend.

Don't bend.

"I'm sorry."

He bent.

What was the right thing to say? He didn't know. It felt like the most esoteric and unknowable knowledge; how to placate a woman in the face of your own mistakes. Deep sigh. Straggling arm fell to his side. "I didn't want to put you at risk."

 

[Darth Daiara]

That gaze never left his, hallow and unresponsive to the sincerity that crushed his remaining features.

"You don't think I'm capable."

 

[Zaavik Perl]

"No, it's not like that," he insisted.

"That is not what I meant by that." Reiteration for emphasis. Even so, he couldn't really think of how to begin to explain what he meant. It hadn't entirely been an omissive reflection.