I don't owe anything about Andromeda.
Set between The Weight II and Phear Phactor...

One's own business

She carelessly throws her jacket into a corner. It was meant to hit a chair, but she misses and it lands on deck. She doesn't care. Quickly she picks up a plate, shovelling some fruit onto it. With it and a glass of water in her hands she slowly approaches the narrow couch, letting herself fall down on it uncermoniously.Without bothering to cut the fruit, she simply chooses one, biting into it, savouring the coolness and sweetness of its taste. She feels herself relax after the dryness of the day, after the staleness of the bar. Her head sinks back against the bulkhead and she tiredly closes her eyes.

Another day in Paradise gone by... It's becoming routine: she is running cargo, accepting just about every job she's being offered, slowly coming to terms with Seefra, each day ending up with a little more money in her pockets, a little more resigned to her fate, a little more... indifferent? Not there yet, but she's working on it.

The only thing she's wondering about is the way she's making a habit of heading for the bar first thing after concluding the day's business. She doesn't drink, doesn't play cards, doesn't know anyone there and has no intention of getting acquainted with somebody, either. The business she needs to make a living she gets from the bartender, who would keep her informed on opportunities either way: his share on the deals she strikes is handsome. There is nothing in there for her... Nothing but the two shadows of her past, seated at the bar, downing one drink after another each evening when she walks in.

She never joins them, barely nods a greeting before withdrawing to a remote, shady corner, waiting for her meal to arrive – that she mostly leaves untouched after the first two glances at it. She can afford better things on the Maru, meanwhile. She silently observes the two of them getting drunk and drunker, throwing furtive glances at her, while she is betting with herself on the amount of time left until the one of them gets up and leaves with at least two girls clinging to his arms and giggling at each other.

The other stays, no longer prying in her direction, his drinks coming in more and more frequently – and looking all as if he's had them made a double. Once alone, he always seems to be in a hurry to drink himself into oblivion, his back turned towards her, his eyes never leaving his hands tightly closed around the glass he clings to.

She waits, night after night, for him to stop drinking, to turn around and join her, to finally say something. Anything. He doesn't. And she's growing tired...

Tired of waiting to hear him start apologizing, explaining, to expect from him at least some gentle words that he'll never say, as she knows by now... For him to do that, he would have to restart thinking about something else than himself, and this is obviously an ability he lost forgood, it seems. If he ever had it.

She knows she needs to stop doing that, going there, watching him... them, waiting. But she can't, not yet. She can't identify the feeling, some kind of crazy, hating love, she suspects, making her come and watch them, while urging her to start minding her own business, to stop being torn between her wish to join or lose them forever, dreaming of them or starting to live her own life...

And yet she knows that during the first week after meeting them again, she had tried everything, all tricks in the book to overcome the gap. She never had expected the Nietzschean to notice, stranded or not – noticing a hand stretched out in friendship was not something coming to Nietzscheans naturally. But him... Him she had known different.

She really tried them all, used even all so-called ‚woman's weapons' at her disposal (something she had never tried before on him), even shed a tear, still: he didn't move.

He seems to like the silence established between them, seems wrapped up in some sort of a sublime, superb indifference he only seldom leaves to show some compassion towards Trance, who – frankly – really seems to need it. But she needs it, too – and does no longer know what to do to get it, from whom if not from him. After all, he is the cause for... everything, but that she doesn't dare to tell him. Not yet, anyway. Her lack of courage though, it puzzles her – who is used to normally measure her courage at the violence of thunderstorms. So why doesn't she then dare to strike out at him? Because he's down and you just don't kick someone down? Doesn't seem to stop anyone else on Seefra...

And so she goes on waiting, night after night, in mourning: for him, her lost self-esteem... for all of them... the times when she was still willing to do everything for them, for him. She would have followed him to hell and back, and in the end she did, followed him to the Abyss, ready to stay by his side in the universe's coldest, most frozen spots – regardless of her fear of the darkness, her dislike for cold.

Well, she had found warmth on Seefra, far away from him. Or so she thinks with a sad, ironic smile. But he had to show up and take that away from her, too.

Every night she then reaches the point when she doesn't care anymore. When she is tired of waiting. It happens every night, and then she gets up and leaves, heading for the Maru. Each night it's the only time when she gets a glimpse of his eyes, finally rising to meet hers in the mirror hanging behind the counter. She feels his gaze lingering on her withdrawing back, but she never stops on her walk back home to her ship.

Getting ready for bed, brushing her teeth, combing her hair, watching her image in the mirror she suddenly realizes with cold fury that she no longer wants to think about ways to break the ice between them. She is through with loving them in silence, cursing him on late nights, with being afraid of forgetting his face and his voice, of breaking the mirror from which his image is slowly fading away. She is after all not only someone he used to know, one of his crew, his XO. She is also a woman and has long learned the lesson that – among other things – this also means that you can let them break your heart, time and again, and still make it through alive.

For just an instant her eyes meet her own gaze in the mirror; she sees their hard, harsh look – and then she sees them warming up, only to harden back as if the softening had been nothing but a mirage. No. She no longer cares.

She curls up in her bed, burying herself under a plaid, closing her eyes with determination. Finally sleep takes over. But at the very last moment before drifting off an errant thought blossoms up at the back of her head:

Don't fool yourself on this. Even if you don't care – you do mind, you know...