Reckoner

Posted on Wed Apr 7th, 2021 @ 1:50pm by Alden Loxley & Kindra Graham

Mission: Back in Black
Location: Alden's Quarters
Timeline: Day 28

Kindra had dressed carefully, in an elegant but modest blue patterned sari, her curls loose down her back and only a subtle touch of makeup and perfume. She waited in her shuttle and meditated on how accustomed she had become to that tiny piece of hope she'd kept wrapped in the comfort of not-knowing. But in the face of Alden's avoidance, speculation seeped through.

When the tea in her mother's favorite teapot had gone cold, she came to a decision. If Alden wouldn't come to her, she would go to him.

A few minutes later, after she re-checked the Echo's manifest for the location of Alden's cabin, Kindra knocked on his door. At the muffled sound of his voice, and without announcing herself first, she climbed down the ladder. Expression carefully neutral, she turned to face him when her feet hit the floor.

"Uh - hey, um, hi... hulloo." Damn - awkward much? Alden cursed internally as he fidgeted both physically and verbally at the sight of Kindra. In His Cabin. Somehow, by chance, deliberate action of circumstance or company and an irritating ability to be elsewhere, he'd managed to avoid being alone with the companion for four days on a Firefly transport out in the Black. That luck was bound to run out sooner or later.

So, standing here like a busted teenager, naked from the waist up but for the wet towel about his shoulders, barefoot and wearing only a pair of clean cargo pants, he tried to look cool and unflustered. And failed.

"Just... uh, outta the shower," he clarified in case his wet, ruffled hair and the scent of soap hadn't already signalled that fact for him.

The sight of him there, half dressed, set her heart to racing at the same time as his obvious dismay at her presence sent icy tendrils to her stomach. Maybe the matron at Madrassa was right. Maybe Kindra had made another mistake, taking passage on board Alden's ship. Maybe she'd humiliate herself completely. Worst of all, maybe she'd only end up hurting Alden again.

"I, uh…" She looked away from him, her gaze falling on various personal items of unknown import, then... his bunk. Kindra half-turned, put one hand on a rung of the ladder, as her other hand brushed against the three-year-old note she'd tucked into a fold of her sari. No. She could not retreat.

Kindra gathered her courage, swallowed, and turned back to face him, sincere regret coloring her features and hands folded in front. "I want to apologize for leaving you the way I did, on Pelorum. You deserved far better. It was hurtful, and… cowardly of me. I am so sorry, Alden."

The second Kindra turned away, Alden's face scrunched into a - what the actual fuck are you doing - self-criticism of an expression. He'd recovered slowly into a mix of bracing for impact and minor shamefulness as the young woman's attention refocused on him.

"You left me while I fast asleep," he said, voice quiet as the memory kicked his heart one more time. "Left a note, as I recall. It was pretty clear." Alden winced, unwilling to voice his best guess out loud just yet. He'd been the weekend-getaway, slumming it with a guy from the Border worlds, and he couldn't blame Kindra for that.

Kindra flinched, contrition bowing her head. Any doubt she'd clung to about how much she'd hurt him evaporated in the starkness of his accusation. As many times as she had reproached herself for her cruelty, it was so much worse hearing Alden describe it out loud.

"That note… did not accurately reflect my feelings." She'd used the resort's stationary to pour out a long letter, expressing everything she felt and explaining why she was leaving without saying goodbye. But then she'd wavered, and second guessed, and listened to the ghost of her mother and the internalized voices of Guild matrons, and wrote another note, and another, until there was only one sheet left. She'd taken all but the last draft with her and could not even remember what the note she'd left said, exactly, except that it was brief. Kindra took a deep, calming breath. "I'd like very much to explain."

Alden wasn't entirely sure he wanted to go all the way back to that moment in time all over again, and he opened his mouth to say as much and then held position. Mouth open, gaze directed entirely at the young woman with her head low. Damn... Nope, couldn't do it. He settled, as was usually favourite, for softly offered semi-affectionate sarcasm.

"It summed up reality well enough, however," Alden said. "And kinda avoided any need for further explanation." He was oblivious to the multiple attempts behind the end product, had never even considered such a thing, and had pushed on past that hurt eventually. More or less. With the help of alcohol plus a series of short-term jobs if he recalled correctly. "Not sure you need to," he added, aiming to help ease whatever burden Kindra was carrying.

Kindra hesitated. For her own self-care, she did need to explain. But not if the cost was causing Alden more hurt. And yet, a trained companion knew part of the art to making a true apology was in seeing the line between explanation and excuse, and in understanding that crossing that line was the difference between accepting blame and shifting blame onto the person she'd hurt. Kindra forced herself to meet his gaze, then looked up toward the ceiling, remembering.

"I was afraid. That night, I couldn't sleep. I knew that in the morning if I tried to look you in the eyes and say goodbye... I wouldn't be able to. Instead I would have begged you to stay with me. And... I was afraid of the consequences to my standing as a companion if you agreed." Rejection had seemed a worse possibility at the time but mentioning that now would cross the line into excuse.

Kindra's hands twisted together, but she managed to keep the waver out of her voice. "Before we went to the resort, I asked the captain to let you remain on the Cicada as a passenger. But he was picking up VIP passengers on Pelorum, and one of them was a Guild matron I knew, an adversary of my mother's. I was afraid she'd accuse me of making the same mistakes my mother made. And I... I was even more afraid that she'd be right."

"I, uh... I need you to know that I left the way I did because I gave in to my personal fears. It was wrong of me and my actions were hurtful." She refocused on his face, holding onto the hope he could accept her apology.

That... was a lot to take in. Alden stood awkwardly and fidgeted as the words hit home one at a time. She'd been afraid? He vehemently disliked the thought of that emotion wrapped about the young woman before him, and this displeasure coloured his features as she spoke. Still, he kept his distance, neither moving forwards to comfort or back to recoil from the harsh truths Kindra shared.

There was so much depth to her explanation that Alden's brain struggled to wrap about it all, his feelings tangling with the past and pulling them both into the present. Her position. Her job. His heart. Her mother?

"It's okay," Alden said, finally. It hadn't been, of course, it had hurt like hell, but here they were, now, trapped on his ship together. It had to be okay, didn't it? And she wanted - needed - absolution from the perceived sin where he had eventually - back in their mutual past - pushed down his pain and thought her long lost to him. The last time they'd met, Ali had been in the mix and this subject? Well, thankfully it hadn't come up.

"You made the right decision," he added, telling Kindra what he thought she needed to hear, his head canted slightly to the side, his tone simple and direct. And Alden hoped, but partially failed, to keep his rekindled pain locked down as he added. "Have you regretted it since, or did you just need to explain?"

She nodded, blinking hard, unable to speak right away. "I don't know if it was the right decision. At the time it seemed like the only decision. I have regretted it ever since."

Damn, Alden cursed himself. He'd gone and made things worse... but he had no idea how to improve that situation in this moment, so simply stood and awkwardly observed the young woman before him. Theonlydecision? He hadn't seen any of this in the note she'd left. It had been curt and plainly offered, at least in his mind.

She shifted on her feet, her bottom lip caught by her teeth in a way that lacked any of her practiced companion-confidence. Alden was the kind of person to accept her apology simply because it was the compassionate thing to do. The appropriate thing for her to do now was say thank you, climb back up the ladder, and stop bothering him. Instead she pressed on.

Kindra spoke slowly in a soft, ragged voice, searching for the right words. "When you and I were together three years ago, it was like the kiss of fire and powder. Bright, hot, and consuming." She started to reach for him but checked herself and folded her hands together. "I have no right to ask, and I know we can't pick up where we left off. But truly, I don't want this to be where our-" she almost said relationship, but that was too weighted a word. "-our story ends. I'd like this to be where our story changes."

"Kindra..." Alden started and then instantly stopped speaking. He stepped in closer, reached out with both arms and pulled the companion into a hug whether she liked it or not. As he squeezed her tighter against his (he only realised as he did so) bare chest, Alden felt that second-thought regret hit internally, but he didn't change position. Words weren't going to help right now because he couldn't think of any that would make things better for her, but he couldn't bear watching her suffer any longer either. Physical reactions felt simpler, more communicative and instinct drove him that way despite his previous plan to remain aloof.

Close in against his body and wrapped about towel, Kindra had little choice but to be quiet, and Alden stood firm in the middle of his cabin and held her until he felt able to let go. It felt like a long few minutes even as they raced by.

"It hurt," he said, simply as he let Kindra go and stepped back again to give her room to breathe. He'd been hurt a lot with love, but he left those words unspoken. "But you're here now and..." Alden mustered up a brave-soldier kinda smile. "That means you're a part of the story. You're right though," he added with subtle weight to his words, words that hung in the air as he spoke then went quiet again. "We can't just pick up where we left off."

Kindra closed her eyes and relaxed into Alden's embrace, breathing in the clean-soap top-note of his bare chest, and his unique underlying spicy-masculine scent that took her to another place and time, to sensation and feeling she had missed and longed for. She allowed herself the momentary indulgence of imagining she had a right to belong there in Alden's arms, and was not just the lucky recipient of his compassion.

Then he released her and his words sounded like a confirmation, dissolving the last fragments of not-knowing. She was here now and part of the story. Not our story. That ended three years ago, because of her. She was here now on his ship because Alison – not Alden - had granted her permission to push herself back into their lives.

"Well then… uh." She took a deep shaky breath and let it out slowly, gathering her outward calm like a shroud around her emotions. "Thank you, Alden. Thank you for accepting my apology and, uh, thank you for allowing me to rent your shuttle. Alison and I really should have asked you first." Her hand closed on the now-meaningless folded paper in her pocket as she half-turned toward the ladder.

Was he acting crazy? Alden questioned himself as he watched Kindra breathe. It had felt goooooood to hold her close, warm, expensive scented slender curves and those memories sneaking up on him unbidden despite Alden's best - if feeble - efforts. The thought of her second-guessing him all this time felt oddly jarring in a comfortably optimistic sense of anxious confusion.

A Companion. An honest-to-goodness straight up, real Companion. Had she really thought about him as a regret? Alden struggled to believe that, and yet coveted that thought in the warmer depths of his ego. She'd missed him, and that was... kinda awesome.

That two-fold train of thought derailed as Kindra's posture reassumed the veil of trained composure and she spoke to him now with perfunctory grace. Alden opened his mouth, closed it, raised a hand, lowered it, then took the towel from his shoulders and flung it across the room. It missed the intended target of his bed to land on his desk, but he didn't notice. His gaze was anchored on the young woman who he'd basically just thrown out on her arse.

"Ali doesn't need to ask me first to rent our shuttle," he said, kicking himself mentally as he heard the words. Alden's expression suggested he'd expected the opposite of whatever this was right now, but he had zero idea of why, or how to alter the mood.

"I'm not sorry," Alden stated. "For any of the time we shared." Then he gave a heavy sigh, and turned to grab a shirt from a heavy trunk to his left.

Not sorry. A pained smile crossed Kindra's lips, imagining an endorsement like that coming from a client. She recalled the eager young pilot who'd flirted with her so outrageously when they first met. The man who had so charmed and captivated her. That man was still here, but now weighed down by responsibility. And for good reason, Alden had made it clear - at least in her mind - he was no longer interested in her. "I know Alison doesn't need to ask. But I, uh… I should have asked."

As Kindra drew her hand from her pocket and ascended the ladder, the old folded letter written on Bai Rih Mohn resort stationery fluttered, unnoticed by her, to the floor.

"Tai Kong Suo You Di Xing Qui Dou Sai Jin Wo De Pi Gu," cursed Alden under his breath as he watched the young woman leave. That could have gone better.... or at least not unfolded as horrendously as he perceived it to have done. But he couldn't fathom how to fix things without taking another couple of steps deeper into awkwardness and with the journey they had in hand and the destination they were aiming for? It was probably safer to keep his distance and not complicate things.

Alden pulled the shirt over his head and turned his back to the ladder, winced and shook his head. If he kept up his unintentional work of upsetting every female on board he'd need to resort to asking James for a cuddle.

-----------