Picking Up the Pieces, cont'd

Ping, ping, ping.

Aittera sat in the corner of the Devious Hope's medbay, watching Selus sleep in the kolto tank. She'd tried to go to bed, but somehow, laying there in silence was worse than the faint, consistent beeping of the monitor that tracked his life signs.

Ping, ping, ping.

In four years of service to the Republic in SIS, she never once disobeyed a direct order. Hell, for that matter, she'd never taken a life out of vengeance or even anger. She'd been an effective enough assassin when the assignment called for it, but she'd believed that she was working for the greater good. Before tonight, she would have thought it impossible and absurd to think that she could just take a life in cold blood.

And now, it hung in the air around her in silent accusation, punctuated by the soft, steady tones of the monitor.

She pulled her knees up and folded her arms atop them to let her head drop against them as tears welled up in her eyes again, the fight playing once more through her mind. She'd heard Rasos's order. She stepped forward to use the handle of her blaster to knock the Sith out.

And then, she saw Selus's body in the snow. Ping, ping, ping.

Denial had been her armor and practically her way of life for so long, it might have continued to come easily enough in that moment for her to complete their assignment. Why didn't it? Just a few more minutes of that false sense of emotional fortitude that convinced her that she felt nothing more than friendship and gratitude for the idiot who'd refused to let her run away.

Ping, ping, ping.

While she'd expected Rasos's anger and a swift boot out of UI, what really delivered the cold smack of reality was the accusation that she and Selus were together. Faced with the truth of the feelings she'd been firmly in denial of, with the evidence of her actions staring her in the face, she couldn't deny it further. She couldn't even find words to argue.

Ping, ping, ping.

He'd been right. And now, she was forced out of the safe haven of her denial and into this vulnerable, bright light of reality. She could no longer cling to the love she had for a man who's death she'd never faced.

Ping, ping, ping.

When Selus had tracked her to the cantina on that little rinky dink moon, he'd said he knew she was a runner the moment he met her. He'd been right. She'd been running since the day Davin Vael died. Even then, she had the opportunity to act in vengeance and kill her CO, but she didn't have it in her, no matter how angry she was or how much she believed he was solely responsible for the death of her fiancee and two other extremely competent agents. She'd just left, disillusioned with the agency that had been her home for as long as she cared to remember. She wanted to be dead with her partner and lover. Instead, she ran.

Ping, ping, ping.

In fact, there was a part of her that was whispering, even as she spilt tear after tear born of guilt and regret, that it would be easy to just go to the bridge and plot a course for some place far away from Universal Investigations and this colossal screw-up. It was like a little siren song that promised a new descent into denial with all the alcohol necessary to forget everything.

Ping, ping, ping.