I remember this.
I wake up, I stumble to the bathroom, and I take a shower. Every morning... or well, just about every morning, anyway. I take pretty hot showers, you know? That make the bathroom all steamy, so I have to run the exhaust fan so I can use the mirror, and so the floor doesn't get covered in condensation.
I brush my teeth, and then I look in the mirror. You know, to make sure my hair isn't sticking up in some weird place?
Today, though, I take a longer look than usual.
Damn, I am getting old.
Lines, lines around my eyes, my mouth. And, more than that... I'm skinny, skinnier than I was, even. I think how much I look like Kyllsa, how my cheekbones show a bit more, how my skin doesn't have that magazine-model young woman glow, and how I just look tired.
My eyes show it the most. That tiredness, that fatigue. Do people see it? I mean, when I leave my apartment and walk to the hangar, and I pass by the people in the corridors and lifts, can they tell? Can they see how worn out I am?
I did not look this old when I left Gradient, just... wow.
It has been barely more than a year.
I did not look this old.
I get dressed, and take a look over my shoulder at my ass in the mirror. Maybe I should stop wearing these pants... tight, strappy, and show all the world that, much like me, my ass is also fast approaching 40. I think for a minute about wearing my workout pants, the loose-fitting black ones that I get from the surplus shop on deck 14-C4.
It's been a year since I left Gradient. Wow I got old in a year.
I drink a cup of tea and eat a bowl of cereal-yeah, the same sort of sugary cereal I've loved since I was little-and head toward the hangar, to check over my ship and do some repairs on my MWD... I seem to have this problem with heating them too long and burning injector nozzles.
While I repair the nozzles, removing them, one at a time, resleeving them, and reinstalling them, I think about stuff, you know? Like, what has happened during this year, about leaving Gradient, forming TRA... urgh, what a mess that was... about reforming as Skadi's Call, about Kala, and Tabor, and Skadi herself, about all those people who just helped me make it through this past year.
I can't believe it's only been one year.
I think about our time in I-RED, about the search that began a year ago, and about how, finally, I did find... well, something... out there in Curse. I pinch the web of skin between my thumb and finger as I seat one of the injectors, and swear some.
Swearing makes me think about Anabella. No idea why.
I'm going home, you know? I say it all the time, how EM is “home”, how I am sort of that kid who grows up, but keeps coming home to stay on the couch when she breaks up with her boyfriend or gets fired from her latest job... but, that's me, you know? I miss Ana, and Anuko, and Bishop, and even Else and Arkady and CJ. I miss Gradient. I miss the stability.
It's been a year since I've had that, you know?
I take the Wolf out for a spin, just to put the MWD through its paces. I just fly from controls, sitting in the cockpit. I do this sometimes, yoke and pedals and throttle, just because you get a connection, a feel, that you just don't get through implants. I know, I know, simulated neural feedback and all that, but damn it, I can't feel the engine's pulse in the palm of my hand on the yoke, feel the ship roll and yaw as I activate the maneuvering thrusters with the pedals.
I take a quick spin through Bosena and into Heild. Yeah, I guess maybe I am taking some really dumb chances, but I don't care, not now. The control pod of the Wolf can eject, just like my pod. If it gets blown up, I'm just as dead as if my pod does. What's the difference?
I stop thinking about it immediately, when the Enyo shows up on my scanner.
It's funny, when I do this. The world around me stops. All my thoughts just go dormant, as I do,without even consciously doing it, the same thing I have done hundreds of times before. Scan the Enyo down, load fusion in warp. Come out of warp, heat my guns and my repper, lock him up... he's burning at me fast, MWD fitted. Heat my scram and turn away, scrambling him just as he enters range, and drift, his scram and web slowing me, as one.
He never lands a telling shot.
Just like I've done dozens of times, I watch as an Enyo explodes just as he enters the range of his neutrons. Just like I've done dozens of times, I give him a wave over the local channel and warp off before his friends land.
The newer pilot is stunned. He's half my age, and his ass still looks good in his pants.
I've changed a lot in this year. I've grown older, lost touch with a lot of friends, lost a few more, moved across the cluster, spent time in Syndicate, killed my first Sabre with sweaty palms, flew solo across most of Angel space to find what I've been looking for... and after all of it, I came home. A lot of others didn't, and a lot of others won't. I did.
Not everything about growing older sucks, you know?
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Topic: The Lady in the Mirror (Read 2423 times)