First Reply What Do The Numbers Mean

[Alana Calloway]

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What Do The Numbers Mean​

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Location: Lok​

Tag: Open​

Gear: TBA​

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Alana sat alone in the corner of the cantina, the dim glow of the overhead lights painting sharp angles across her face. The glass in front of her was still mostly full, condensation trailing lazy paths down its sides. She wasn't drinking—not really. Just staring, lost in thought, lost in numbers.

Her fingers drummed against the table, keeping time with the steady thrum of the music playing somewhere in the background. It was a habit, an old one. Something to keep her grounded when the math started creeping in.

She exhaled sharply, tilting her head back against the wall. Math. That was what it felt like, trying to piece her own past together.

"You ever notice how memory's supposed to work like a straight equation?" she muttered under her breath, not really talking to anyone. Maybe to the air, maybe to herself. Maybe to the ghosts that lingered just beyond the edges of her mind.

Well whatever her aim, the bartender thought she was talking to him, and raised a brow.

“Pretty sure that’s not how memory works.”

He started, but Alana was already rambling. "One thing leads to another. One plus one equals two. Cause and effect."

Her fingers tapped again. One plus one equals two.

"But mine?" She let out a dry chuckle, shaking her head. "Mine doesn't add up. Doesn't balance. Feels like someone took half the numbers and burned the rest."

She reached for the glass, rolling it between her palms but never taking a sip. The Weequay bartender tried again.

“But there’s no numbers in-“

"There's things I should know, things that should be so damn simple. Like my own name. Not the one they gave me. The real one." A pause. "But every time I try to do the math, every time I try to solve for X… it just doesn't come out right."

The cantina was too loud, too full of life, but Alana felt hollow in the middle of it. Like an unfinished equation, a half-solved problem that no one cared enough to complete.

She leaned forward, finally lifting the glass, though she only stared at the liquid inside.

“Memory isn’t math though-“

"One plus one should equal two," She murmured again. "But all I ever get is a blank space where the answer should be."

And that was the worst part. Because no matter how many times she tried, no matter how deep she dug—

She wasn't sure if she wanted to know what the real sum of her past was.

“Yea, alright, I’m cutting you off.”

The Weequay bartender spoke, taking away her glass before the Echani could say anything, leaving a less than pleased Alana behind.

 

[Tibera Jessen]

Tibera had become friendly with Alana after their last job together. Right now the two were traveling together, stopping in at a watering hole on Lok. It wasn't exactly a dream destination, a pirate planet covered in sulfur and sand, but she'd been to worse cantinas. As Tibera returned to the bar, she found Alana talking to the bartender, it didn't sound like it was going well.

As the big merc sat down, she reached into her jacket to throw some credits on the table. "I'll have a glass of wine, preferably a nice dark red. You can keep the extra. I plan to do a lot of drinking tonight!"

It was lucky that Imperial credits still carried some weight this far out in the boonies, because she was not carrying much else. That was the bartender sorted for a little while. This left Tibera to contend with the difficult mathematics that her companion was wrestling with. It didn't make much sense to Tibs, but then again she wasn't too studied in the ways of lost memories. She only had the little experience with the way people's heads worked, and that didn't teach her too much.

"Don't think your lost memories are gonna just walk up and kick you in the ass in a place like this," Tibera said, her head resting on her left hand. "Actually, it's kind of ironic right? Most people come to bars to forget chit, and here you are looking for your memories in the bottom of a glass."

Tibera's gallows sense of humor was perhaps a bit too dry and misplaced in this scenario. She was never too good with consoling others, her relative isolation kept her from learning communication, and she admittedly wasn't too keen on learning. It was damned hard to connect with others in a profession with such a high mortality rate. Why care for one's fellow man when they so often ended up targets, or casualties...

Alana Calloway

 

[Alana Calloway]

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What Do The Numbers Mean​

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Location: Lok​

Tag: Tibera Jessen​

Gear: TBA​

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Alana let out a short, dry chuckle, swirling the amber liquid in her glass before remembering that it was now gone. She shot the bartender a dirty look, yet her hand still tried to swirl the nonexistent glass.

"Yeah, well," She muttered, setting the glass down with a dull clink. Well if she had ones it would have clinked. "Figured I'd try my luck. Who knows? Maybe I'll get a vision from the bottom of the bottle."

She didn't believe that, not really. But what the hell else was she supposed to do? Sit around and wait for the missing pieces of her life to fall into place? She'd been waiting. She was tired of waiting.

She leaned back, tilting her head up just enough to glance over at Tibera. She had recognized the woman from past works and for a moment, there was a hint of glee.

"And hey, irony's just the universe's way of kicking you when you're already down." She smirked, but it didn't quite reach her eyes.

The truth was, she wasn't even sure what she wanted to find anymore. Every scrap of memory she clawed back felt like another piece of herself slipping through her fingers. Like trying to rebuild a house with rotted wood—was there even a point?

Maybe it was better to forget.

Maybe it was easier.

But she didn't get that choice, did she? Not when the past clung to her like a shadow, lurking just beyond her reach.

She exhaled through her nose, shaking her head. "Anyway, I'll drink to bad ideas. Since I've got a whole collection of 'em." She gestured for another round, shooting Tibera a sidelong glance. "And if I'm lucky, maybe I'll even forget why I came to this miserable rock in the first place."

 

[Tibera Jessen]

At least the other woman seemed to have her sense of humor intact, especially given how weird this whole thing was. Tibera tapped her fingers on the bar counter before the bartender came back with her wine. It wasn't the high dollar vintage she was looking for, but it'd work to take the edge off. She looked back over to Alana with a grin on her scarred up mug.

"Hell, I figure you must got some serious stuff hidden up there if it's buried that good. Stuff like that might be better off forgotten. I know I've gotten pretty far just trying to bottle everything up."

It was a scary thought though, having a life you couldn't remember. As much as Tibera disliked the memories of her time in the pits, she knew they made her who she was, without them she'd be something totally different. Which was a nagging thought deep in her psyche, where would she be if she'd had a normal upbringing? Damn that was tough...

With another swig of her wine Tibera glanced over the Echani, she was quite the looker, but it was obvious there was more to her than those pretty features and snow white hair. Something just under the surface that you could only barely see. She was a real mystery, and that was probably the most intriguing thing about her.

"Ya know, as far as I can see, you're doing pretty good. Though, I think we're neck and neck for the contest of the worst ideas. I know I've had a few dumb ones myself."

 

[Alana Calloway]

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What Do The Numbers Mean​

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Location: Lok​

Tag: Tibera Jessen​

Gear: TBA​

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Alana let her fingers drum against the side of her glass, staring down at the amber liquid inside. It wasn't the drink she was really looking at, though. It was the past—what she remembered of it, anyway.

"It's funny," She said after a beat, voice quiet but steady. "You'd think with everything I've been through, I'd have more to say about it. But my life's just a bunch of jagged edges now, pieces that don't quite fit together like they should."

She exhaled through her nose, shaking her head. "I remember Nar Shaddaa. I remember the stink of the lower levels, the way the neon signs never shut off, the weight of a blade in my hand before I was even big enough to know what to do with it. My mother taught me how to fight, how to move—how to kill before I even hit my tenth year. My father? He taught me how to lie, cheat, steal, and—well, smuggle." A wry smirk flickered across her face, but it didn't last. "Didn't matter much in the end. They both got themselves killed."

She rolled her shoulders, letting the old ache settle into something dull and distant. "Alfonz took me in after that. Taught me how to track, how to shoot, how to stay alive without stabbing someone in the back for it. He was a good man. Thought he could save me from the path I was on. Maybe he did, for a while."

There was a long pause. Then, her fingers tightened just slightly around the glass. "Then there's Konor."

The name felt strange on her tongue. Familiar, but wrong, like a song she couldn't quite remember the melody to.

"I know he was important," She murmured, brows furrowing. "I know I cared about him. But it's like trying to grab smoke—I get these flashes, little pieces of something real, but the more I reach for it, the further away it gets." Her voice turned bitter. "I can remember what it felt like to lose him, but I can't remember what it felt like to have him in the first place. Ain't that a damn joke?"

She let out a slow breath, tapping the side of her head with two fingers. "That's the funny thing about memory, Tibera. You don't get to pick what stays and what doesn't. And me?" A humorless chuckle. "I think I got the raw end of that deal."

She shrugged, tracing the tabletop. “I close my eyes for a minute, and twenty years go by. It’s…that’s what happened to me. Everything since then is fuzzy, and the people I knew are…all gone.”