Interlude
I don't like this part of the story: it is the first moment in which betrayal was a choice I made, and thinking of it makes me wish to curl my body in upon itself and vanish, winking out like a black hole on its way to collapse.
But I cannot, for like a black hole, my collapse would mean destruction and ruin.
There can be no quite fade to dust for me.
I am left only with my shame and my regrets.
I imagine, sometimes, that I might have chosen differently, even then in that moment. But when I reckon with myself while holding the full weight of self-knowledge, I see the inevitability, the gravitational pull toward him.
He stood before me, crest unbound, a tumble of dark curls.
In the docks, away from the dark throbbing lights of the marn den, his skin had a warm golden hue, like the dunes of Perthalia where ancient treasures still lie buried.
His eyes – green, like chips of jade flecked with gold, surrounded by the white of distant stars – moved as he looked at me, giving away every shift in his attention.
Sashen's eyes told me everything, and I would have known what he is from his hungry stare alone even were it not for the throbbing in my chest, the pull deep within my body to lean closer, to reach, to touch.
Sometimes it is easier to blame what I did on the instinctive yearning I felt for him. We are all weak for virra in our own way; I have learned that I am weaker than most. But what I did then was not because of desire; it was not impulse; it was not inevitable. What I did was pure calculation.
I beckoned him to come with me, and he did.
I did not tell him of the abayan cruiser that would dock the next day for refuelling before it turned its graceful body toward the Thenat cluster, the impetus for my own timely departure.
I did not admit that I had been looking for him, this virra hidden away in a marn den on a lowly station near the Gorelion nebula.
I did not tell him anything I should have.
I beckoned, and he came.
I try not to think about what might have happened if I had not betrayed him, this time and the many others. What might have happened if we had met by chance, rather than by design?
I cannot think about that because it is not what happened, and dreams of other pathways are a route to madness.
I do not need yet another reason to loathe who I have become.