Meandering Paths
Independence has been declared. The Verse is at war. Again… or still? I’m not sure I’ll ever know.
I’ve spent half my life in the Black. It seems like a lot of that time I spent in a war mentality. Or at least a siege one. I was 22 years old when I stepped foot on the TigerLily. Shyla Kramer, Yu-Shin Harrington, Jason Fraiser, Brian Connelly. They were just names. I never thought that stepping aboard that ship would change everything.
They became my family. They understood more about me than anyone in my life besides Nala and my dad has ever tried to understand. Even now, 16 years later, the life I had aboard that ship informs my decisions. Harbinger casts a long shadow. I have not yet made one decision that I haven’t run through the lens of ‘Would Harry kick my ass?’ or ‘How would Shyla handle that?’ They are my role models. But I look at this war with jaded eyes; I don’t think this one will be as easy as the last one. I can’t decide if things were a lot simpler back then… or if I was merely too young and stupid to realize how many shades of gray there were in the decisions they made.
In the 8 years I’ve been away from that family, the Verse has gone through massive upheavals. I’ve done some things I’m proud to own… and I’ve done some that I’m ashamed of. When it all hit the fan this time, the crew looked to me and asked if we were at war.
It is a choice only they can make. I made mine even before this. I made mine when I understood what had been done to Joshua, why it had been done, and by whom. Call me stubborn if you want, but I don’t have to see that woman’s side of things. There aren’t many things in the Verse that will send me into full-on hate mode. Allowing your child to be experimented on is beyond inexcusable.
I look around at the crew I have now, and watching them makes my heart ache. I wonder if Shyla felt the same way about asking the crew of the TigerLily to defect with her and become the Harbinger. Did she ask them? Or did she simply tell them her intentions and they chose to follow? I never asked her that. I know that she defected because the Alliance executed her husband for asking too many questions, but that’s all she ever said on the matter. I wonder what she thought about the night before I arrived on board. Did she doubt her decision at any point? Looking back, she spent a lot of her time alone. I wonder sometimes if that was by choice.
I watch Rina and Joshua lately, and I’m jealous. Not that they’re getting married. Just that they have someone to share the load. I find myself more and more wishing for the chance to talk to Nala. I ran from her just as much as I ran from Harbinger. It’s taken a long time for me to realize that she never blamed me. I blamed me. For not being there when my dad died. For not being there when Nala was being hurt by Trey. For leaving her a widow alone with a baby to raise. For not being a very good sister. We’ve finally gotten past all that, I guess. It took years. Maybe I’m too stubborn for my own good.
And then I found other things to blame myself for… I blame me for not staying in Blue Sun after Miranda. I should have. Not for Brian, though that is what I told myself for a long time. I was struggling to figure out where to stand. And I blame me for being stupid enough to think that straddling the line was even possible. Staying neutral is never really possible – because neutral just means that you’re for sale to the highest bidder. Or you’re at the mercy of those who’ll lie to get you to run their cargo. Dance with the devil and you will pay the price. I deserved to be blinded. In some ways, it was almost a relief – the punishment fit the crime. I’d deserted my principles somewhere along the way. So why shouldn’t the Verse take away the thing that meant the most to me?
There is no right side in this fight. And I have the notion it’s going to get a lot nastier before it gets better. The Independents have shown they’re willing to kill children. Laying waste to a military academy is a tactical solution to the problem of an overwhelming force… but it’s also killing kids. Kids who haven’t had the chance yet to actually form their own opinions because they’ve spent their lives indoctrinated in the classroom. But at the bottom of it all, no matter that the Independents are going about it sometimes in the wrong way, I also cannot support a regime that would experiment on its citizenry. So the Independent side is the only place I can stomach to go. I cannot see neutrality in this as an option. Someone once said that making no choice at all is also making a choice – it is choosing to stand by and let someone else determine your fate. And that I will not do.
So there I have it… my choice, in a nutshell. The lesser of evils, I hope.
I don’t recognize the face I see in the mirror anymore. She is a stranger. The woman in the glass almost looks like Nala. I wish I could say that the wrinkles at the corners of those eyes are laugh lines like hers, but I cannot honestly remember the last time I laughed at something. I can see the weariness and worry creating furrows in my forehead as well. The eyes that stare back from inside the mirror still do not belong to me, even after all these months.
Half my life in the Black. I can’t say I was exactly alone most of that time – physically it’s gorram hard to be alone in a ship in space. As the wedding approaches, I have to admit that this is the first time I’ve ever known real loneliness. I have to officiate at the ceremony; they are my best friends. I am happy for them. But a part of me wishes I could simply disappear into the Black. I’m okay with being alone usually. I’ve made my choices and I have to live with them – I chose to run from Nala, then from Harbinger, and then from Brian. I choose to continue keeping people at arm’s length because I figure they don’t need to get tied up in the mess that is me. That little fling with Arrow was kinda nice… there wasn’t a gorram thing to that besides what comes in the bed. Just… stress relief. If I heard tomorrow he got himself killed, I’d feel bad in the same way I’d feel about hearing that one of those Marines who flew with us was killed – It’s a waste of a life. But I’m not emotionally attached. And I don’t want to be. I care too much about everyone on this boat. I need the space sometimes to just… not give a good gorram.
I still wake up smothering in the darkness, certain that when I open my eyes there will be nothing there but the Black. It’s ironic that I have always been so at home in the Black, and yet now I cannot bear to have full darkness. I wonder sometimes if it’s because I never really woke up. If being blind sent me around the bend and I’m really just lost in my own mind, escaping the Black through fractured dreams of a horrifying reality. Will I wake up someday and find that I’ve been blind in a rubber room all along?
… Heh. Probably not. I’m just not that gorram lucky, right?
Go to Nika's Crew Page
Go back to: Season Six, Aug 2522 to May 2523
Go to EPISODES or TIMELINE
