Loneliest When I'm With You
"Sometimes it's hard, though. Something in me says, "This isn't the one," and I slip. She slips. We drift away. But there's no one else to turn to, no one to move on to, so eventually we come back to each other. And it's sad, you know, because we aren't right for each other, but we aren't right for anyone else, either... It's loneliest when you put two lonely people together, and they don't know what to do about it."
Atton
I told her I was going to work on the Ebon Hawk, and I'll go down to the hangar for an hour or so once I'm done here, just to make the lie convincing. There's not a real, concrete reason I can give for doing this. We haven't fought today. We haven't really talked, either. She just nodded absently when I told her I was going out; didn't even look up from her datapad. Probably reading another article about Revan.
Maybe that's part of the reason. I'm getting sick of being second to a woman who's probably dead.
"What's wrong?"
I glance at the girl sitting next to me. The cantina's too dark for me to see her clearly… she's got reddish hair, and she's too young to recognize how apathetic my advances are. She thinks I like her, that this will be the start of something real and true. I just want to get laid. It's a game of bait-and-switch that I've played in dozens of cantinas across the galaxy.
"Nothing," I reply with a roguish grin. I think I should feel guilty about what I'm doing, but there's nothing. I think my conscience killed itself in frustration years ago, so there's only background noise as I lean closer to the girl and kiss her neck.
I'm losing Jada. She's leaving me… she's always been leaving me. Maybe we were never really together at all. I don't know, I don't make a lot of sense when I've been drinking. I'm lonely when I'm around her, and I'm lonely when she's away. I hate what she did to me, that she's trying to save me. The fact that she thinks I can be redeemed means she doesn't love me… she loves the idea of me and my tormented past. She loves what I could have been. She doesn't see how twisted and ugly I am, only how I can be changed. This girl, who's leaning against me and giggling from the liquor, probably cares about me more than Jada. She cares about me as a man, not as an idea. Not as a mission.
Sometimes I wish she'd never found me, or had left me to die on Peragus. Then I wouldn't be in this twisted situation of loving and hating someone at the same time. And I do love her… but I brutally murdered the last woman I loved, so where does that leave me? I hate her just as much: she doesn't love me, she's turned me into something I'm not, and she made me fall in love with her, so I hate myself for hating her.
I call the girl by the wrong name, and after a few times she stops correcting me. I don't even hear what her name is. She's just another warm body I'm using to try and feel alive. And even this isn't working as much anymore. I might have to try stims next.
No… Jada might notice that. I'd never do this if she still had the Force. I'm still too scared of the Jedi to risk angering one of them. But she's just a woman now, and she won't know. And if she does know, she obviously doesn't care.
I get dressed in the dark and head for the door of the girl's room. She asks where I'm going. I shrug.
"But… I thought…" She sounds confused, still half-asleep. I turn in the doorway.
"Look. I used you, okay? Two nights from now, when I'm with someone else, I won't think about you. This was all I wanted. Move on." I slam the door on any reply she might have made. Hopefully she'll learn not to get picked up by half-drunken men in cantinas.
I wander down to the hangar and then walk under the Ebon Hawk. It's later than I thought. Don't really have enough time to do much of anything here, but I hang around anyway. I miss Bao-Dur suddenly, even though I know he'd kill me if he knew what I was doing. His loyalty was to Jada first.
I manage to kill another half-hour before I force myself back to the apartment. Jada's in bed, pretending to sleep. I know she can't sleep without me there. Again, I wait expectantly for the pang of guilt, but there's nothing. I take a shower and get into bed. She curls up against me, and I don't bother to pretend that everything's all right.
Jada
Ten years ago, I'd have been furious if someone treated me like this. Ten years ago, if my lover had been regularly picking up whores at the local cantina, I'd have dropped him without a second thought. But that was a decade ago, and now I just don't have it in me to care.
I can't say I blame him. I haven't been much for companionship lately. I think I'm obsessed with Revan. Maybe that means I'm not—crazy people are crazy because they don't know that anything's wrong with them, right? But my sanity doesn't matter. The only thing that's important is finding her. Which means that Atton isn't as important as he should be. I wish he'd put himself out of his misery and leave me. I can't do the leaving myself; I need him too damn much for that.
I know that I've been a walking corpse since Malachor. I'm disappointed with fate and the Force that I've lived this long. I know how lonely he gets… I'm the same way. We just aren't enough; both of us are too broken and jagged to complete each other. All we end up doing is slicing ourselves to ribbons. But this painful and heartbreaking relationship is all I've got left, so I have to stay.
I take another drink and regard the bottle in my hand thoughtfully. Tarisian ale—the real stuff, not one of the twenty imitations available around the galaxy—found in a hidden crate underneath the Hawk's flooring. Real Tarisian ale is like liquid gold nowadays—people would pay fortunes for a glass of this stuff.
As I finish off the bottle, I decide that I shouldn't drink anymore. It makes me think too much.
I glance at the clock on the wall as I toss the bottle into the trash compactor. Pretty late; Atton'll be back soon, after making a cursory stop at the Ebon Hawk. I don't know why I haven't called him on it yet. No… I take that back. I do know why. I'm scared that if I tell him I know what he's doing, then he'll leave. Because I can't find it in me to believe that he'd want to try to fix things. How could he? He doesn't love me; there's barely a person here to love. Besides, Kreia and the Councilors said that I drew people to me with the Force, made them follow me. Made them care about me.
He never fell in love with me, the Force made him feel that way. And now that's gone, and he doesn't know what to do when my influence isn't leading him along. So he stays, against his better judgment, and I won't leave, because I can't be alone again.
I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling until I hear him open the door. I make a token effort at faking sleep, even though I know he'll see right through it. He slides in bed next to me, and I automatically cuddle up against him, as if somehow he'll be able to stop the pain.
I hear him sigh, and I know he's as miserable as I am. A man who kills the people he loves, and a woman too shattered to love anyone at all.
What a pair we are.