Fancy That
Posted on Sat Sep 19th, 2026 @ 2:47pm by Neda Amariah
Mission:
Veils
Location: Personal Quarters, SS Mary Rose
1941 words - 3.9 OF Standard Post Measure
"Are you perchance familiar with the Terran concept of Suzu?"
As far as impressions went, it wasn't perhaps the most accurate but the theatrics behind it were heartfelt enough that the soft hiss of the door closing behind Amariah as she re-entered her compact accommodations seemed inadequate somehow. The Bajoran's tone, the flounce in her step, the way her shoulders wobbled as she momentarily stepped into the role of Diplomat of the Year, the entire effort seemed worthy of slammed frustration and the consequential wall-shake to follow but neither eventuated. Instead, the room greeted her peacefully, barely raising an eyebrow at her displeasure and only marginally protested as she sat heavily in the room's single chair and sank into a sulking huddle trapped between it and the small desk that housed a basic terminal.
There were any number of things currently not going according to Amariah's carefully constructed plans. The only thing that would have made that more disappointing would have been the expectation built around a time when things had played out the way they were supposed to but life had magnanimously prepared her for constant disappointment by ensuring she got to experience it on a regular basis. Really, it made a solid case for the chaos of improvisation because trying to lay down any groundwork in advance only seemed to waste time better spent finding entertaining distractions. She'd purchased at least a week's worth of transit on this hunk of junk and for what? Front-row seats to her own funeral, or perhaps murder trial. Maybe both.
The stars outside the viewport directly over the desk seemed to join the mockery, with their nonchalance and mind-my-own-business-but-look-at-me-doing-it dazzle. Amariah hated them, which was a sentiment very much driven by current circumstance, but not because they were too showy or because they seemed to paint a poetic and optimistic indifference to the tribulations of those too insignificant to matter on a cosmic scale. She loathed them because they were stationary, which meant she wasn't moving, which meant that she wasn't leaving.
Which meant that time was running out.
Those with a certain philosophical bent, who couldn't help but wax lyrical about the nature of existence and the mounting dread that ran alongside it, would have said that time was always running out. If they'd dared to speak up at this moment, Amariah might have been tempted to tell them in no uncertain terms how very unhelpful their tea-infused, gong-accompanied rhetoric was but would likely have stopped short of outlining the very specific nature of her particular doomsday clock. Whack-jobs with a bundle of incense sticks and a theory weren't entitled to personal information, even if said information would have shifted the conversation nicely from The Universe is Forever Unravelling to a single fixed point.
Thirty-six days, nine hours and twenty-two minutes.
It wasn't, as it happened, the longest time Amariah had run away for. Once, around the age of nine-and-a-bit, she'd been tasked with what was a relatively easy job of watching a target and reporting back when he left the area. Due to the nature of responsibility, and more importantly the target, that involved an unprecedented amount of freedom in the guise of literal homelessness because it was deemed far too risky to come and go when the person in question had every reason to desire an easily traced source. Sending in a child had been the ultimate deception and Amariah had been trusted for the same reason they often allowed her to go further afield than the others; she had proven she would always come back, even when she had every opportunity not to.
It was exactly that level of trust that made her intended absconding so genius. Her instructions had been brief yet thorough; communication was limited to one of two signals broadcast on an open frequency and rendered utterly benign to anyone listening in who didn't happen to understand that one sneeze meant the target was still local and three coughs meant that he'd departed or at least disappeared and not resurfaced. It had taken her only hours into her second day to plant a tracking device under the collar of the guy's dog, (who he very generously refused to go anywhere without), and the world had opened up like a mollusc fawning over the current's offerings. There were a great deal more options when she wasn't confined to posing as a street urchin and trailing after some bloke whose only interest seemed to be buying trousers and being rude to barmaids. From the seeds of ingenuity sparked a rebellious urge and the situation only improved when idiot fell and broke his leg and wound up over-extending his stay by forty-three days, eleven hours and three minutes. Having been told not to return until she was sure he was on the move, Amariah had considered it entirely reasonable to treat the change in fortune as a mini-vacation. What's more, she was so adamant for at least a week that this was the moment she finally made up for a previous mistake years earlier and slipped free of the noose.
Reality had set her straight pretty quickly on that but it had been a nice fantasy while it lasted.
Where the stark difference between that effort and her current re-attempt lay was in the motivation. Back then, though she supposed her life was difficult in places, it had been the only life she'd known and she had developed wits enough to navigate it with minimal punishment. She'd earned her place as one of the favourites by then and most of the hardships came from the way the others resented her for it than any particular atrocities dealt out by their handlers. Wanting to escape had stemmed from wanderlust and a frustration with being confined to a very limited range when there was an entire universe to explore.
This time, Amariah's impression of the great wide yonder was distinctively less hyperbolic and any opportunity to wander about in it was now suitably tarnished by the fact that a good number of people wanted her dead. Not just an idle compulsion to humour themselves with the possibility of her demise but an actual active intent, fueled by a frankly-insulting amount of money, that offered only the slightest bonus for presenting her in one piece. Amariah knew quite a few people who treated bounty hunting like a pretty profitable side-gig and not a single one of them would have considered the paltry incentive enough to warrant the hassle of transporting her anywhere. It was a problem. One that was growing decidedly more difficult to dodge as each day passed.
But, she'd had a plan! Really more of an idea at first but it held within its potential the essence of a plan and that was sometimes a lot more than her usual starting point contained. As her world had begun to shrink and the amount of people she could rely on had trickled down to a shaky handful, trying to formulate any kind of exit strategy that didn't rely on its permanency being of the fatal variety had necessitated a great deal of creativity and resourcefulness. Amariah doubted she'd ever get any credit for it but life was prone to being unfair lately and she'd have been lying if she'd tried to pretend she wasn't already mildly numb to its betrayals. She'd travelled further than she'd been in years, at a pace that had barely permitted her a single glance backwards to see who was following and just when it had seemed like every shot in the dark was going to miss its target, she'd found him. On some backwater planet in the arse-end of no where while a geriatric starship sat in orbit and had the audacity to look reasonably convincing from the outside.
The man whose entire contribution to her life had been to show up when nobody else was available. Technically, and Kaelan wasn't likely to disagree about this much at least, it had never been an intention of his and seemed more the product of the universe's sense of humour than explicit altruism but fate gyrated in mysterious ways sometimes.
Of course, in keeping with the current theme of her having very little control of her own life and the stakes within it that kept ramping up, Amariah had not actually located Kaelan before he'd found her. That had the unexpectedly tiresome effect of making him suspicious well before she'd done anything to deserve it whilst simultaneously proving yet again to have been the right distraction at the right time. What had complicated it had been the audience they'd attracted, now determined to remain relevant far longer than Amariah was comfortable with, and the tiniest inconvenience of the slightest piece of out-dated information that really would have been handy to know prior to her lobbing her last egg in the direction of this particular basket.
He'd fucking quit Starfleet.
Slouched in her chair, her legs pulled to brace against the edge of the desk as her feet balanced on the cushion, there was nothing about her current mood that prompted Amariah to adjust the ambient lighting. Ordinarily, there was never time for moping or wallowing or sulking. Any time where she'd felt tempted had resulted in a very swift reevaluation of the wisdom of letting her guard down and the Bajoran had found a way to distract herself from the emotional residue of an underlying sense of abject despair. She had learned from a very young age that to be worthy of compassion and sympathy, you had to fit a specific mold. You had to behave in a certain way, submit to a certain stereotype and never, ever have the temerity to redefine what thriving might look like when your options were limited and you just didn't feel like surrendering to the misery today. Life was either too horrible for you to get out of bed in the morning or you were doing fine. Anything in between and people just didn't slow down long enough to notice.
And honestly, that was fine with her. Far better to be under-estimated and ill-defined, she'd learned how to use it to her advantage. By some standards, that left her with a lot to apologise for and if she'd been asked on any other day, under any other circumstance, Amariah might just about have mustered the energy to perpetuate the idea that she didn't give a targ's arse. She'd rehearsed it so many times that, on one of those other days, she'd have sworn she had convinced herself that she really didn't. But it caught up with a person, the emotional exhaustion of being so entrenched in the charade that you barely remembered where you'd left your actual conscience. It never lost track of you, though. Like a dog with a fucking homing beacon under its collar.
It wasn't a crisis anymore, those were more spirited. Just the cold, uncompromising certainty of protracted loneliness. In a minute, she'd rally. Anyone who knew her would have bet money on it because that's what Amariah did, being in possession of a fool's wealth of stubbornness. Any minute now, she'd reinvent her last option and reshape it into a brand new one.
Her bleak gaze, still fixed resentfully on the starscape outside the viewport, finally succumbed to the urge to sink into darkness.
Any minute.
What am I meant to do now?
