driftfleet | 02. this is my life now

Entry tags:

02. this is my life now

Who: Gendry
Broadcast: NEVER
Action: On the Iskaulit and the Golden
When: August

The Golden

He'd went to sleep in his nice comfortable bed on the planet, completely oblivious to the notion that the fleet would be leaving that very same night. It was simply one of those things for which he'd had no intention of worrying about it. He woke with a start later because his augment was designed for one thing, which was to tend to the ship's engines. So when the ship began to sound just a bit ragged, he instinctively rolled off the floor the Atroma had unceremoniously dumped him in.

So they were right. He muttered some curses, then pulled himself up to his feet and went to work. After an hour making careful calibrations and monitoring the sensor readings (thank gods he'd learned to read!), he was finally able to return things to what he thought was comfortable. He would afterwards reflect that he really had absolutely no idea what he'd been doing, but the important thing was that the ship hadn't blown up and that this was about the best anyone could hope for. Though as he looked at the contents of what he had to work with, an idea had begun to come to mind.

Some days later, his crew would find him having already removed many of the panels off the stove as he tried to find a way to increase the heat. This was only his preliminary efforts, but he was fully convinced that he could cobble up the components he would need to make a workable forge up here in space. He had the experience, the knowledge, and absolutely none of the permission required to make it a reality.

(tl;dr: find gendry tearing up the kitchen, working on the ship, or paying a little too close of attention to what the exercise equipment is made of.)

The Iskaulit

At some point, someone had the decency to tell Gendry that he wouldn't have to live the rest of his life confined to one tiny ship trying to take things apart in order to stay busy. Instead he was able to live his life confined to several ships, one of which was large enough to be its own sort of marketplace. So one shuttle ride later and he was there!

There was absolutely nothing that interested him. The purpose of the gym eluded him, he didn't want to meditate, he barely could read so books were right out, he wasn't feeling particularly devout, and he hadn't been long enough away from the planet to feel particularly sentimental about seeing plants being grown. So that only left the space bar. With the well practiced ease of a man who spent an awful lot of time on a medieval world, he ordered an ale. What he received wasn't quite as frothy or watery or dirty as what he was used to drinking, but it was certainly a beverage. Eventually a few drinks later and he finds himself sitting on a bench in the public art display, staring at the mural of an artificial sunset.

(tl;dr: gendry can be found at the bar, checking out the art exhibit, or otherwise just wandering the iskaulit taking in the sights for the first time..)

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-- On days like today, she liked to make herself at home near the mural. Sansa would shuttle in early with Lady Ahsoka and attend meditations with her. At first, the practice had seemed foolish. But now, a moon-or-so into the habit, she always felt most at peace in the hours immediately following those efforts. But as she was unwilling to take a shuttle back all alone, she sometimes had to wait on another trusted soul -- Ahsoka, once again perhaps, or a brother -- to collect her from the Iskaulit. In the meantime, she would sit on a bench before the mural and...

Seven hells. Someone was already there. It was stupid, mayhaps, to think of any bench as her bench. But it was so often deserted as this time of day. Slowly -- with a rustle of silk -- she paced by the interloper and stole a glance only to see that it was him. Gendry, the royal bastard, and the young man who'd claimed some knowledge of her. Her family. The muscles along her cheek tightened and they met eyes for only a moment before she demurely glanced away.

Pulse thundering with uncertainty, she didn't know what else to do but to retire to a different bench. They remained within each other's lines of sight, but Sansa did her best to pretend as though he wasn't there. And she wondered if he was cross that he wasn't still on the planet -- she took a vicious, unkind pleasure in seeing how the fleet's magic had raked him back as it had raked in the rest of them. You are no different from the rest of us, she thought with venom. Unfortunate souls.

With a soft sigh, Sansa pulled a supple-backed book out from a woven bag. She didn't like the way the cover bended and warped in her hands, unlike the hard-covered tomes with which she was familiar. But she did like the fantastical stories found within. This particular book was about a young hero on a mortally dangerous quest -- and by the looks of it, she was already some three-quarters of the way through its plot.

And as fascinating as that plot was, it didn't stop her from sneaking glances from time to time at the young man inhabiting her bench.

He was not so subtle as to steal glances. The very moment she had turned a corner into this personal space he had allocated himself, she was the subject of immediate scrutiny. It was uncomfortable for him to say nothing, because he had remembered a time when meeting her unexpectedly would have elicited a far different reaction than the one she had given him. So he watched her, using the time to try to unfold those layers of the person he had known to whoever this was that was left. The woman that was left seemed disappointing.

It was still her, though. That was the trouble of it right there. She had taught him to read out of a book not so different than the one she held right now and he found himself wondering it it might contain the same stories they had read together. There was a nostalgia in that, because he hadn't touched that book or any other since he left the Cothromach. So he spent as much time watching her as he did trying to see if there were any words on the book's spine that he could make out, though ultimately he couldn't. But every attempt at a stolen glance she made was captured by his rapt attention. If someone was to ask him what mural was in front of him, he would likely have to look at it first to be able to tell them.

By now, the words on the page merely danced. The swam, jumbling together -- she could not pay any attention to them at all, so consumed was she by a fluttering mixture of alarm and vexation that he should be so bold. When she wasn't sneaking glances, she would swear she could feel his stare battering into her. Like a stiff breeze. Like a tall wave. Uncomfortable, she cleared her throat and adjusted her posture as she sat. Sansa raised the book so it covered her face nearly to the bridge of her nose. The spine was now in plain view: The Cavalier's Quest.

But even still, she couldn't concentrate. Miffed, and after another three minutes of this feeling left stewing, she set aside the book altogether and fetched out her needlework from the same woven bag where the book had lived. This, she hoped, would absorb more of her own attention.

The act felt hollow. After a moment, she raised her head and met his eye and -- uncommonly brave, for her -- she simply sat and stared back. As though daring him to break contact first.

He could make out the first and last word, but it had been too long since he'd done any serious reading to make out the middle word. It hardly mattered, since she didn't even read it anyway. There had been some prickles of guilt when she had set the book down and it slowly dawned on him that perhaps he was being a little too unkind in his quiet accusations of her incompleteness. So by the time she had given up the stitches, he finally decided he should say something.

"Sorry," was the word he chose. Only then did he look away to glare at the mural.

"Why do you apologize?"

This part of the Iskaulit was mostly empty, apart from them and the art. And she hated the way that allowed her voice to bounce off the walls and amplify. Sansa didn't want to be loud. Sansa also knew exactly why he apologized -- she'd shamed him into it with a chilly stare of her own, but some part of her wanted to hear it forced from his lips. A full, pretty apology.

Despite all this, a flicker of apprehension still lived in her eyes. Like she knew she was treading a dangerous line.

He was not going to be so easily conned into this game. The last thing he was going to do was indulge her in this petty admission. "You know why."

Only she didn't and that was the problem entirely.

"You were staring," she tried to sound sharpish. But, mostly, she sounded watered down. Emptied and hollow and on the verge of a tremble. "It's unkind. I didn't care for it."

Needle in one hand, needlepoint frame in the other. But she wasn't doing anything. She was just...sitting. Watching, wary, like an animal uncertain of another animal.

"Well I stopped," he answered coolly all while glaring at the sunset like he could cause it to catch on fire if he stared hard enough. "So it's done."

Problem was, it didn't feel done. Too much potentiality hung in the air. She wanted to stand up and scream at him and demand what have I ever done to you? But instead she simply sat there while her muscles wound tighter and tighter.

With a tight-laced voice: "Pray tell, why did it happen in the first place?"

There were of course numerous reasons he could list off, all of which would mean revealing so much of what she had actually meant to him once. But there was Sansa and there was Sansa and he knew which one this was.

"Must be my lack of highborn graces, m'lady." Somehow, he managed to make even m'lady sound like an accusation.

"So be it. I am led to believe, then, that you must stare at all people with the same expression. It must not be only me."

There was a thin vein of challenge in her voice, as though she begged to hear his retort -- but didn't want to outwardly question his explanation.

Edited 2016-08-01 23:17 (UTC)

"Might be I do," he said in such a way as to not have to lie. "Don't know why a highborn lady would even notice at all."

"I notice when someone stares. Why shouldn't I?"

It was invasive -- not simply because of the staring, but because all forms of attention are, in a sense, invasive.

"Wouldn't you notice if someone was staring at you?"

It was a poor argument he was making, that much was true. It became evident in the sudden way he scowled and looked away again. His conclusion came out as a sour: "It wouldn't matter if they did."

A soft sound: frustration, mingled with defeat. She couldn't compete with that kind of apathy -- not least of all because she knew how it could secretly engender defiance. She'd used a similar tactic herself for moons and moons.

"It mayn't matter to you, but it matters to some."

Matters to me.

"Not as much as you think."

Not as much as it had before.

Bold. Brash. And mouthy, too. Her cheeks colour, and her lips purse in a tight knot of a frown. Sansa set aside her needlework. Sitting, tense, with her hands folded on her lap. She asked:

"What quarrel do you have with me?"

She was plaintive, again. Sore -- as though she feared having to fend off another enemy. But what had she done wrong in this instance, aside from laugh at him down on the planet?

His answer was honest, almost bitingly so. All his defiance was not aimed at her, but the memory which he wasn't able to rid himself of. But when it came absolutely down to it, none of what he was saying was what he wanted to say. Every last thing he'd already said had already been repeated in his mind and loathed for their bluntness and cruelty.

"I don't have a quarrel with you." His eyes found his feet instead and he leaned forward, hunching his shoulders as his elbows were cradled on his knees. "You're better off forgetting about me."

Sansa swallowed hard. Her fingers closed around her communication device -- a fail-safe, in case she needed to call for help. Sansa was a liar, and she could sniff out other liars. And she thought for certain that Gendry was lying to her. Or, at the very least, he was not speaking in good faith. Something dragged beneath the surface of their conversation, like sickly sea-weedy tendrils.

There isn't anything to forget, she almost said. But she knew better than the needle a wild animal. Instead, a meek: "As you say."

Abruptly he was back on his feet, rocking a moment on his heels before he finally made himself look at her again. She was frightened of him. It was obvious in the way she clutched the device, just as she had with her locket less than two years ago. She had done that before a long march in hostile country had proved to her that he had no ill intentions towards her. He had once resented her for that, but now he saved that resentment for himself and felt only pity for her. She was so much lesser now than he had known her.

"I'm sorry, m'lady. I'll not trouble you with my staring again."

But it would be hard to avoid her in a small fleet like this. Not unless he fancied spending all of his time confined to the Golden.

A muscle twitched in her jaw -- and she had to swallow her retorts, because they weren't safe to speak aloud. Instead, she (bravely) rose to her feet. At the very least, she no longer felt compelled to sit like cowed creature.

"I would be so grateful," she answered. All her haughtiness was a smokescreen. "It is otherwise impossible to find peace. Thank you, ser, for your concession."

Perhaps she forgot how he'd asked her not to call her by that title. Or perhaps she remembered that precise detail, and twisted it now like a knife in the flesh.

He grunted his acknowledgement of this concession, all while resenting the title once more. Around his neck, attached to a leather cord, the shield was covered under his shirt and he felt it against his chest. For a moment, he thought of pulling out and either giving it to her, throwing it at her feet, or even renewing the pledge it had been made for. But instead he ignored it.

"I'll leave you be," he announced. Then he was on his way, ignoring how his throat seemed to burn.

She was confused. Lost, and turned-around, unable to understand from where the young man's venom found its origin. Did he hate her? Is that why he stared and prickled and grunted? Or was he like Marillion -- rotted to his core with lust, and now was resentful that he was caught watching her? Sansa's heart beat fast against her ribcage. So fast it hurt. So fast that as she watched him walk away, she felt all the peaceful work of her morning's meditation come undone.

She stood for a good three minutes after the young man departed. Stood, tense, until she realized her whole body was trembling. And even then, she counted out five minutes more in order to give him ample time to clear the hall, the Iskaulit, and the shuttle bay before she dared move.

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02. this is my life now

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