Quantum Entanglement: Howzer and Aurelia

5. Disarmament

A couple weeks passed, the days blending together with the usual routines. Howzer begin to make a habit of finishing his evenings at 79s with Aurelia, chatting at the end of the bar after his rounds of boisterous stories and unabashed (and fruitless) flirtations. She discovered that there was more to him than the flashy persona he hid behind, as their conversations began to venture past the shallow realm of the immediate events of their daily lives and into their pasts, their interests, and their thoughts about the world.

Howzer had been an ambitious clone from the start, possessing a notable desire to make an impact above and beyond the expectation of "just another trooper". His accelerated aging had shaped him into a formidable and yet sometimes over-confident soldier who yearned for the glories of command and battle. He had been disappointed when his brother Sprint was assigned to an active unit while he had been relegated to Senator guard duty, and he lived with a seemingly constant need to prove himself.

He wouldn't admit it, of course, but Aurelia noticed it throughout the course of their discussions. She found herself opening up as well, admitting her multi-faceted dreams of the future as well as her inability to determine the next step toward any one of them. They contented themselves in their shared disillusionment, punctuating their flashes of vulnerability with snarky jabs at one another and a variety of attempts at humor.

Howzer suddenly found himself with a few days of leave as Orn Free Taa was off-world and he "apparently wasn't good enough" to be in the traveling guard. Aurelia had told him about a secluded little park that she liked to frequent, and he felt unusually interested in checking it out. It was in a somewhat deserted sector of the planet, a former center of art and creativity that had been left behind in the wartime scramble toward innovation and production. It was now primarily inhabited by elderly citizens who had nowhere else to go and shared a joint sense of duty to maintain the beauty and calm of the area.

The park was an unusual sight on a planet covered with skyscrapers on every usable surface... Since the entire sector had been written off as a useless relic of the past, it had been spared from further development. A synthetic pond lay in the middle of the park, surrounded by grassy knolls and a variety of trees in every shape and size. It felt simultaneously expansive yet cozy, as the bushes provided a wealth of places for one to find solitude and privacy. Even the constantly-humming grid of speeder traffic overhead seemed to fade away, hushed by the canopy of branches that grew together over the entire space.

Howzer walked along a path, replaying a conversation in his head from earlier that day, where Sprint had informed him that he'd been promoted to Captain and was to be stationed on Ryloth in response to increasing Separatist pressure on the planet. Howzer felt happy for his brother but had also been unable to hide his own disappointment at being left behind. His heart burned with ambition, and each passing day felt like another waste of his created purpose.

"You'll be amazing, Sprint," he had said, both earnestly and sadly. "You'll have a whole squad. Think of what you'll be able to do."

"Being a Captain isn't about the power, Howzer. It's about doing the right thing."

Those words still rang in Howzer's ears as he continued along the well-worn path through the park, watching some long-necked birds dipping their heads under the water periodically in search for food. He frowned, ruminating on the seeming futility of his existence, when the silence was broken by a figure suddenly stepping onto the path in front of him.

"This park ain't big enough for the two of us, mister," Aurelia drawled, holding her fingers and thumbs up toward him in a ridiculously cheesy representation of twin blasters. He startled, reaching for his own and leveling it at her before the recognition settled in.

"You're gonna get yourself shot, pulling stunts like that," Howzer warned, returning the blaster to his holster and taking a deep breath to calm his racing pulse. "Unless you're looking for a bit of danger?" he continued, raising an eyebrow and amplifying the persona.

"Come on," she chided, giving his shoulder a light push, "Don't do that stuff with me." She fell into step next to him as they continued walking down the path.

"What stuff?" he asked, with an indignance that she couldn't tell was playful or genuine.

"All the bravado. The flashy big-guy stuff."

"That's just who I am!"

"That's not who you are," Aurelia said, stopping suddenly and turning to face him. He paused, meeting her gaze. "You act like it is, and you're so eager to prove yourself. Your time will come. But you don't need to always be so macho about it."

Howzer felt simultaneously hurt and exposed, and turned to keep walking. Aurelia caught up to him in a few steps, lightly touching his arm, "Hey, wait... I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I just mean..." she drifted off, uncertain of how to phrase the swirling thoughts. "I don't know... You've got a good heart and a sharp mind, Howzer."

Caught off guard by her sudden sincerity, he slowed his pace a bit, keeping his eyes on the ground in front of him. He turned her words over in his head, realizing that her perception of him, like Sprint's, was different than most anyone else's. But his idea of a Captain was not someone who was soft and vulnerable. It was someone strong, confident, and assertive. Someone who took charge and wasn't afraid of anything.

"Sorry," Aurelia said again, feeling increasingly awkward at the silence and her unbidden assertion.

"It's alright, Aurelia," he replied, "Thanks, I guess?"

"You're welcome... And you can call me Reli," she said sheepishly. "Only my boss calls me by my full name, or my parents when they're angry..."

"Reli," he echoed, smirking suddenly and grinning at her, "That's a Reli nice name."

"Wowww," she groaned, though unable to resist a smile, "That is bad. How are you such a playboy with such a terrible sense of humor?"

"Like womp rats to the trash," Howzer bantered, running a hand through his messy hair. "It's hard to fight them all off sometimes, honestly." There he was, back at his old tricks. Aurelia was sure she wasn't going to get through to him in one single conversation, but she was glad the tension had passed.

They continued walking down the winding path, which perused the small park in such a circumnavigational way that it felt like it went on forever. Conversation dwindled, but instead of scrambling for any suitable topic, they both seemed to find comfort in the silence. The space was so different from every other in their lives and neither one wanted to leave. But, as all things do, the path eventually came to an end.

"This is not the kind of place I ever would have imagined myself in," Howzer admitted, stretching his arms behind his back as they paused where the park met the sidewalk. "But it's pretty fantastic. Thanks for telling me about it, and thanks for stalking me all the way here."

"I'll have to bring a mop next time for all the drool as I watch you," Reli countered. Some of her replies were witty, some were cringe-inducing, and some were an ambiguous mix of the two. She shrugged off the unspoken thought as Howzer gave it a quiet chuckle.

"I've got some fun spots of my own, you know," he continued. "So maybe next time I'll impress you with my own corners of the planet."

Reli lifted an eyebrow, keeping her voice steady but feeling a slight quickening in her chest, "There's a next time?"

"If you're lucky."

***