Darkness, and silence filled the residence of Alfimi Elwren aboard the wounded Gyrfalcon. The past tense already hung in the air, as evident by the single metal crate placed at its center. On the room's rudimentary bunk, a figure huddled against the wall, motionless, blankets gathered loosely about its knees. A cable ran from somewhere beneath them to a rectangular generator on the floor, which hummed away gently, providing the life-giving power that they relied on.

Slowly, Alfimi Elwren looked up, eyes catlike and gleaming in the dark beneath her now ragged cerulean bangs.

There wasn't much to gather, all said. Sara's quarters had been hit directly by the Jacobin's assault, and most of it hurled into space. Just some clothes, documents, odds and ends... The woman barely kept anything at all, compared to her partner's packrat ways. It had looked as thought a great and terrible claw had rent the room in twain... and Alfimi had hesitated at the entrance, simply... taking it in, giving herself time to process it before continuing.

Then she had begun to work.

She scoured every inch of it, reaching down between the melted metal plates, stretching herself as far as she could reach to scoop up whatever was left. She had clambered up and out across the ship's surface in search of scraps - she went through the woman's closet, under her bed, and through whatever furniture remained, packing everything away. Then, when all was said and done, when the whole affair was picked clean... She had retreated to her familiar room, to cry and wail into the smothering softness of a pillow... and then to gather herself, slowly, in peace.

It had... taken some time. Finally, there it was. Sara's entire life, in a single metal cube. She had sat, then, at last, her own power reserves starting to run dry, to recuperate... Yet refused to fall into the "sleep" of standby mode, afraid of what she might see. She simply gazed into the dark, spellbound and silent, mind vacant.

At length, her listless gaze caught sight of the blinking electronic label affixed to the container's surface.



Alfimi blinked in the gloom, regarding its neon red print solemnly.

It was time to face the music, she thought. Dread and fear curdled in the pit of her stomach... But the thought of trying to hide such a thing, of even attempting to run... terrified her even further. For all she knew, the man was already aware, and was patiently awaiting her call, his finger hovering on what may well have been the switch that kept her functioning. Taking a deep, internal breath, she entered the appropriate command... and waited.

It took time to travel the distance from Hyperlight to Archaeon, what with the basic communications of the Gyrfalcon being put to work in such a trying time. It left Alfimi waiting for a decent chunk of time after she sent out the call. Quantum communication would snap into place once the connection was established, speeding up the process, but for more than five awkward minutes, the android was left to wait. On the other side of the call, Trent Silverton was (for once) not hard at work. He had been previously hard at work just ten minutes ago, but now the head of Exegesis was taking a moment to collect his myriad thoughts over a video feed of the day's events and a hodge podge of grains and proteins slathered together in cheese and other dairy products. The man had a thing for casseroles: he was always more satisfied getting all the flavors of a meal in one shot instead of splitting everything up on a plate. Even when he just started off as a mercenary, Trent slapped everything together in one pot before eating. Now he just had better ingredients in his bowl.

Typically quick to answer calls even during what was ostensibly a break for him, the blinking across Trent's eye of an incoming transmission made him place the bowl down and turn to the terminal screen standing right besides him at his workbench. He hesitated just before his eye shifted focus to answer it, the moment he got the information on just who it was. The hesitation was drawn out a bit, right alongside the air he slowly pulled into his lungs. Deciding another minute or so wouldn't hurt, he pulled his bowl back over to him and had a few more thoughtful spoonfuls of diced up steak and rice before mentally preparing himself. He slid the bowl away, centered himself, and focused in on the receive command that had been blinking just over the upper left corner of his peripheral vision.

The call connected, and the pair saw each others faces once more.

"Alfimi," Trent said in a slightly more subdued fashion, "to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Trent."

It might have been something of a shock for Silverton, to see the normally very put together Alfimi looking like... Well, this. In spite of their relationship, there was never a sense when he spoke to her that she was some kind of inferior, and the woman's smug sureness could be nothing less than grating - but this time, her gaze flicked away after meeting his briefly, and she trembled terribly. Her hair was a mess, and she had yet to repair the skin-deep damage to her face, jet black marks exposing the silvery components beneath, that creeped from her neck up her cheeks, like the roots of a tree through ice.

There was a long pause.

"Sara's gone."

When she finally spoke, it was almost a whisper. She blinked, slowly.

"She was murdered... by a man called Jacobin. While I was away, he came and..."

...She trailed off, bringing a hand up to her face. She couldn't even look at him... But she pushed forward, regardless. He deserved to know. They all did. They needed to know why, how... It was the very least she could do. And... If he never wished to see her again, to cast her out into the void? She would almost welcome the punishment, for even that might have somehow soothed her soul.

"I'm sorry." She said at length, bowing her head, voice choked with emotion.

"I'm so sorry. It's all my fault."

To say Trent was sick of dealing with Alfimi Elwren and the plethora of problems she brought into his periphery was honestly a bit of an overstatement. But that didn't make him any more enthused when she said his name like she did, and took some time to prepare what she was about to say while looking like figurative garbage in what seemed like a very long day for her. He took the time to observe her facial features, the pockmocks and slices, the cracks in the flesh, the overall damage to her powerful, yet unliving (and unhealing) form as she thought about what she was going to say next.

And then it came, and the typically subtle sound of one biting on their own lip was almost loud to the android, emphasized enough, albeit unintentionally, she could have guessed the action taken even if she didn't see him yank his bottom lip under his teeth and suck on it as one would a lime. It finished with a punctuated smack of his lips and a long exhale - all the time it took him to think over what was just dropped on his lap.

Trent knew Sara Janovsky for a long time. She didn't deal directly with him nearly as much as Myun's coterie in the old days, but at the same time he connected with her on a level only really comparable to the sisters Rys. She was a damn good pilot, and a bit of a kindred spirit in the way they operated. It was only a bit earlier in the day that Myun was off, and she couldn't put an exact finger on why even though she knew something was wrong. She got feelings like that here and there - she was quite attuned to the sort, after all - but this one definitely did stick out, especially since it was so much she brought it to his attention. It made sense now. It also made some sick sort of sense how it apparently came about.

"Yes, I know of Jacobin," he remarked, without saying that he got most of his data on the fellow and his machine directly from Alfimi's head. "I suppose that makes this a bit of a sick joke."

The pair exchanged a prolonged silence. Would this be the point Alfimi would cry, if she had the capacity to? She sure seemed remorseful, for once. But that was one hell of a reason to finally push over the edge. He was upset - his mind was dashing with what he was going to say to Myun, and everyone else for that matter, all while trying to internally cope with what it meant for him, and dealing with what was still right in front of him. The woman he always saw as a child with too many toys, a young girl who never grew up and had life thrust her into a position she was never fit to handle. Maybe, in another life, but he hadn't come across that version of Alfimi Elwren yet and had no intention to. One was enough for him. But his features stayed hardened, and he grabbed his mush of mixed up food and stuffed it in his face instead. He took some time to chew and swallow, gave him some time to collect himself, before he spoke up again.

"Are you satisfied? Is this what it actually took for the madness to get reined in, Alfimi? Someone to actually die that you cared about?"

Trent’s words fell upon her shoulders like a rain of sledgehammers, but she didn’t flinch. This time, it was not out of callousness, no - she had simply been rendered numb by the day’s events. The man’s tone, his voice... said it all, even as she continued to avoid his gaze.

Her mouth opened, and she tried to say something... but nothing came out. At length, she simply nodded, slowly, eyes clenched shut.

Yes, she was saying. She’d had enough.

If the Jacobin’s goal had been to break the proud Alfimi Elwren, the woman who had bent the world to her will twice over, who had carved her name into history, whose determination was as uncompromising as the metal body she inhabited... He had succeeded. What remained was a dazed and disoriented figure, groping about the smoldering ruins of its former glory, bloody and humbled, looking for all in the world like a puppet that had its strings cut.

She simply hung her head... and waited. No furious rebuke, no spiteful venom, no sneering bite... only agonizing, uncharacteristic silence.

"ARE YOU SATISFIED?"

Trent was not about to let the petulant android escape confrontation through silence. It was the first time she had even seen the man so much as raise his voice, nevermind yell. He had put up with so much from this woman since the Cataclysm that she actually made him wonder if he was enabling something that was against his own moral code just by humoring her. And now she was reaping the whirlwind, and he felt like he was partially responsible for the harvest.

"Do you see now? What your actions have done? I would actually be shocked if you did, since shooting your star-crossed despot two decades ago didn't exactly trigger any deep thinking. But for her sake, and for yours, and for all of ours, I hope you finally get it."

He wanted to shut off the feed and be done with Elwren, but this all filled Silverton with a righteousness he rarely exhibited. He wanted to hear her admit it, and he wanted to rub it in her face. It wouldn't bring anyone back, but it would give the closest thing he would have to catharsis before he had to go and share the news.

Her facade remained placid. This wasn't the first time she'd been yelled at, even by someone she respected. This wasn't the first time she'd been made to relive the abuses she'd piled on that woman either. For decades, it seemed, those memories had been used as a bludgeon against her. In fleeting dreams, in hushed whispers at the recesses of her mind, in loud shouting from her victim and even detailed cognitive reenactments. On level, she could even hear Sara's voice saying those words instead of him. But at this moment, drained of all reason, all purpose, all will, she couldn't even the motivation to so much as twitch.

To live is to act. That had always been at the core of her defense. It was the simplest and most fundamental truth. From the moment anything came to being, it impacted the world, and could not help but do so until the moment it ceased to be.

That her actions had had such consequences, that she had caused harm, was to be expected - anyone attempting great things would suffer them! And at the same time, if she did as Sara had done, if she tried to just hide herself away from the world somewhere, it wouldn't solve anything. The things she had created, the actions she had taken, the people she had influenced, all of it would just keep churning away. If nothing else, HE would keep coming, on whatever this mad crusade of his was. What were her options then, if even her death would not halt the damage being done?

And if she were to just accept that and let it happen, wasn't she just admitting to herself she was the monster everyone said all along? That she was truly beyond redemption, that this ephemeral dream of an existence she held was completely pointless? Was that how she, how they both were to go out?

To live was to act. To die was to act. Even to not act was to act. It was clear to her now, there never would be an end for her. Her lips parted once more, and the cold dry air passed between them.

"... no. I'm not. And I never will be, will I."

Her head lifted, and she stared him back in the eye with her empty red hues.

"Such things as 'fulfillment', and 'satisfaction'. The things 'Alfimi Elwren' has been chasing this whole time. They never existed in the first place, did they?"