5, 25, 52? :D
Last one! ❤️ AND BACK TO ANGST
52: Exhausted numbness after crying.
Maia couldn’t have said how much time passed before the trundle of wheels over the Defender’s floor roused her out of her fugue. She started for a moment, knots of anxiety pulling tight inside her before her eyes focused enough to register the familiar barrel shape of T7-01’s chassis.
“Teeseven.” She deflated back against the side of the holoterminal, letting out a shaky breath. “It’s you.”
T7 let out an inquisitive whistle, rolling towards her where she sat slumped on the floor in the middle of the ship’s empty conference room. Maia shook her head.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I just… needed to hide for a while.”
The little astromech stopped short. Warbling out another series of beeps, he rolled a few hesitant inches back the way he’d come.
From someplace, she found the energy to summon up a faint smile. “No, you’re fine.” She dragged a hand from her lap to pat the floor next to her. “Keep me company a little while?”
With an enthusiastic trill of agreement, he scooted across the remaining distance to park alongside her. Drawing her legs up underneath her, Maia shifted to drape her arm around T7 and rested her head against the top of the droid’s, letting the metal casing cool her hot face.
The storm of emotions had passed since their return from Umbara. Now she just felt drained, wrung out and exhausted as though even if she’d wanted to cry she’d have no more tears left. The rawness of her eyes and the thick, tight feeling weighing in her sinuses layered over the other aches and twinges that chorused through her every time she moved, legacy of the train crash and the fight through the wreckage afterwards.
She didn’t mind. Physical pain was something to focus on - a welcome distraction from the sick sensation of the world falling out from under her.
Did I do this?
She kept circling back to that thought. There were so many questions chasing round and round through her mind, unanswered, maybe unanswerable: where had it all started? What had she missed? Had they gone wrong somewhere, the two of them, or had it been wrong from the start and she’d just been too blind to realize?
She’d thought that they’d been recovering, that the rift between them after Iokath had begun to heal… but it seemed now that had only been an illusion.
No matter what path she took through memory trying to make sense of the tangled mess she’d landed in, she kept coming back to the same question: Did I drive him to this?
“…I don’t know what to do,” she murmured against the scuffed metal of T7’s casing.
The little droid whirred, processing for some moments before he beeped out a hopeful suggestion. T7 + Jedi = launch now + find Theron + retrieve?
A quiet noise hitched out of her and caught in her throat, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I don’t think it’s going to be that simple this time, little guy.”
T7 swayed a little, head tipping downward, and let out a mournful dwooo.
“I know.” Sighing, Maia let her gritty eyes fall closed. Soon, she knew, decisions would have to be made, orders given. The Alliance would have to take action, and the endless movement of the universe wasn’t going to hang suspended while she struggled to regain some fragmentary sense of balance.
But she couldn’t face any of it right now.
Leaning against the faithful support of her oldest friend, she tried her best not to think.