Catch-up complete! This one is a follow-up to FFM 2025 18: Connecting, and a more introspective piece at that. Fortunately, it went only 18 words over the limit, which helped a lot with finishing catching up.
Despite his fatigue, Steirdrar could not sleep. The conversation he had had with Agent Ket over dinner and later drinks kept making rounds in his head, all the things he had learned about the Eskel-Zai and everything he had shared about himself with her cataloguing into neat compartments.
Even though the prospect of sparring with a worthy opponent and telling about her and QWERTY’s more epic exploits made her perk up and she listened to him with rapt attention, Agent Ket was remarkably tired. It showed in her eyes when she stopped moving, the nonstop action masking the deep exhaustion she seemed to be feeling. It was most likely not just the two decades of war, either; her childhood must have been challenging too, judging from the little she had said about her relationship with her biological family — It’s easier to stay away and not have to deal with being treated like a broken child.
A broken child, even though she must have, at minimum, been approaching 100.
Steirdrar could not help wondering if she struggled to get enough sleep too. If she woke up in the middle of the night in cold sweat, unable to fall asleep again, often. If the isolation from her families, both biological and adopted, got to her. If she ever doubted herself and for a fleeting moment made the motions to ask for advice or a second opinion from someone she could not contact anymore, only to realize what she was doing.
Steirdrar had to wonder if his family saw him as a broken child too, someone who must have fallen victim to enemy propaganda ever since from early days of war and been manipulated into betraying their beloved republic.
If only he could ask them. If only he could hear their voices, even if they would call him the worst names possible and disown him. If only he could make sure they were still alive, so that if the war ever ended, there might still be hope for reconciliation.
He desperately wanted there to be hope for that.
…What did Agent Ket see when she looked at him, though? As an Eskel-Zai, she must have learned at least the names, if not faces, of every single Bloodletter, but she had not reacted to his name. He could imagine that she had not had enough awareness to connect his face to anything before their spar, and perhaps by that point she already considered him a friendly face, being the iasa’net’tea who helped her when she was having a bad time on-base. But not even a hint of reaction to his name, with or without already knowing he was an ex-IRS Enforcer… Was her pokerface that good? Or had she categorized his name as someone she did not have quarrel with… or, since he had not been present at any atrocity that affected her personally, especially Thyrif, had she foregone learning his name altogether in favor of learning those of the Enforcers, Bloodletter and not, she ought to hunt for cherava adan relatanaia fera?
Steirdrar did not know which option he preferred.
Nevertheless, it was nice, talking with Agent Ket. She acknowledged his past but never dug into it, as if he was one of the far less bloodstained defectors and not a Bloodletter. She was interested in his thoughts and skills far more than the horrors he had been part of, in the positive memories he had rather than those that would haunt him until his death. And, admittedly, as curious as Steirdrar was about the obscure part of Agent Ket’s background, he liked picking her brain and listening to her stories far more than digging for what were likely painful memories.
Would Agent Ket like to be considered his friend, despite his infamy and how it would certainly affect how she was perceived? Or did she want him to be only a sparring partner, more a colleague than a friend? She did seem to treat her fellow Eskel-Zai in the AIRF — with the exception of her partner, QWERTY, of course — as mere colleagues, even the ones from Clan Frula, after all. Then again, the Eskel-Zai he had met when they had been drinking had looked tired too, each of them likely exhausted from the toll the war had taken on them all, so maybe it was just how she coped with losing her clan.
Maybe it was the fact that for once someone closer to a peer than a superior treated him as a mere person rather than the monster he had been, but Steirdrar could not help wishing that Agent Ket would come to consider him as a friend. It was unlikely especially since she did not seem into socializing overall and her interest in him was more focused on his skill than personality, but he could not shake off the more or less irrational wish. Maybe it was the isolation, the loss of his social life that had started at some point during his climb in the IRS ranks, that made that wish for friendship so persistent; humans, like most sociable species, needed connections to other people. It was only natural that his neglected need for meaningful connections would raise its head the moment someone showed any liking to him on a personal level.
Did Agent Ket feel similarly, being so isolated? Did she lose sleep over her need for connections raising its head upon finding a sparring partner she enjoyed talking with? Or was QWERTY enough to sate that need for her, enough so that she did not lie awake in bed thinking about the interactions she had had with him?
Steirdrar did not know which option he preferred.
What he did know was that even though his eyelids were finally starting to grow heavier, he was going to wake up sleep-deprived in the morning.
He had to wonder if Agent Ket would haunt his dreams, not that he was likely to remember any of them in the morning.
WindySilver 
2 thoughts on “FFM 2025 20: Contemplation”