Madlands

31. The Puzzle

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Grey had thought that she knew what it was to be alone.

She had spent years on her own, her entire adult life alone, by her old definition of it. But that was not alone. That had been keeping herself at a distance, not getting too close, avoiding attachments, and never fully dropping the walls she'd built up. She'd had no idea.

This was alone. She had only a slippery concept of how long she'd been in isolation—it was impossible to hang on to any sense of time. It felt like weeks, but she'd only had three, or maybe four, so-called meals pushed through the sliding slot on her door, so perhaps mere days. If so, they'd been the longest, strangest days of her life.

She'd been barely aware of the heavy door to this new cell slamming shut after they'd dragged her in. She'd been almost manic, with the news of Cereda's continued existence consuming her entirely. The truth was a deliverance, and eventually it had carved an opening in the numbness of failure and guilt. Through that opening rushed the other emotions that had been waiting without diminishing, including—finally and overwhelmingly—grief for Kayliff, Ingrid, and Case.

They had set out that morning to do nothing more than to have a look around, but hadn't faltered when it turned into so much more.

Grey relived the moment when she'd told the team that they needed to stay. No one had shown a hint of reluctance; no one had tried to find some other way. The chance of any one of them getting out had become near-zero. The fact that she had beaten the odds still stung. If she'd managed to hold on to the data-key, her escape would have had more meaning.

She even found herself grieving Ingrid's sweater at one point—how, slashed and bloodied, it had surely been incinerated after the processing guards had made her change into the white jumpsuit. The fact bothered her more than it should, set against the far greater scale of everything else that had been lost. Grey acknowledged that it was not the object she mourned, but its bestower, a woman she might have one day come to count as a friend.

But Grey no longer made friends. She made contacts, and being friendly with some of her contacts didn't count, if she wanted to embrace the full and hard truth.

Which was why G'neenan's masterfully delivered gift was wasted on her. Even if she could get to an active station, she had no one to call—no real friends and she definitely no longer had an "impressive guardian," as G'neenan had called him.

Mando.

She hadn't been allowing herself to think about him. She was afraid to. In this dark cell, her mind was the only experience, giving her thoughts and feelings an almost physical presence. The sharply conflicting feelings of longing and regret that she held for Mando might tear her in two. She turned, once again, away from the looming mountain of memories of him.

All that she found to face, instead, was her loneliness.

Even her months on Irrova with the Jawa's were nothing compared to this. They'd been nosy and cranky and bossy and chatty. They lit horrible cook-fires outside the trawler in the middle of the night. They had odd habits and little rituals that most people probably never got to (or had to) witness. Jawa camp.

The first time Mando had said the nickname back to her, she felt like she'd cracked some code. She'd found a small sense of play underneath the armour, and he was letting her see it.

Mando. His mountain roared with an avalanche that she could not outrun.

The first time she'd really looked into his Beskar face, from across the floating holo of her apartment plans.

The relief of returning to his presence after she'd found the place ransacked.

The stupid pride she'd felt each time he'd been quietly impressed with her knowledge or skill.

The way he stood when he was deciding something.

How he hadn't shut her out when she'd pried into him, instead letting her see more.

His hand on her waist when G'neenan had made his play for her to stay.

The innocent awkwardness of his blustering after they'd woken up in an embrace.

Making camp on Noax and drawing maps for him in the soil.

Dreaming up their backstory.

The way he flew his ship.

His speechlessness when he'd found out she was purposely eating the worst rations, and him then leaving sandroot packs in places she would find them during their exhausting trip along the Nycho.

How much he'd liked Rin as they hiked to the village.

Lacing her fingers into his, outside the terrible tea shop under the magic of Pallis.

The fact that she could see the expressions on his face, right through his helm.

His signet around her neck.

His gloved hand on her wrist, and then his hands everywhere.

Risking his life to save hers.

Each one of these moments was a spot of light dancing on the surface of a sun-soaked lake.

One of the brightest spots of all was one of the simplest—in the tired darkness, when he'd told her about Ogem, about what it was like... the shape of the hills, the sound of the rustling grasses, and the way the sky changed so slowly at dusk. He'd made her pack up the things strewn across her bunk before he started, knowing well enough that she'd soon be asleep. And she had, fallen asleep, with his voice and his visions turning into her dreams.

Joy.

Did the light of this moment shine any less brightly than the memories she held so dearly of Trell? Was she any less full of comfort and hope in the hold of that ship than in the arms of her family?

It was, undeniably, a different kind of happiness—more complex, more knowing—but no less true.

Grey brought her palms to her forehead and pressed as hard as she could as an almost silent wail wrenched itself from her chest.

One of her great failures was not what she'd understood it to be. She'd failed a man who had shown her the start of a real life, whole and waiting. She'd failed her future.

The avalanche turned ugly, as she knew it would.

She's on the decking of the Crest's hold, thick with fury. Mando wants to treat her knife wound. She wants to stop existing. He is trying to reach her across the despair of losing everything, and reveals his own horror—that he'd endured her same agony as a boy, on the whims of the same evil. She does not reach back for him. She spurns his sincerity and denies his right to feel the same pain that she does. She ends everything.

The memory was so shameful it took her breath away. It was as if she hadn't believed him, couldn't accept that he, too, was a broken child along with everything else that he also was—hunter, protector, companion, disciple, wit, ally, saviour, gentle soul. She'd wanted to solve the puzzle of who he was—had kept trying to fit all of his mismatched pieces into one picture—because that was all she'd allowed herself to be: just one thing.

She was the lost child of a lost world, trapped in a doomed struggle to get back to a place that was forever gone. She'd told herself she needed answers, but she'd just needed to not let go. She was her mission.

If Mando was not one thing but many—and yet somehow still whole—with each one of his contradictory and confusing pieces finding a home in one of his various selves, what if she could be too? Who else might she be able to become?

Grey couldn't see any images of herself beyond the damaged one she knew so well. Perhaps, though, if she started smaller and more gently—started looking for her own distinct pieces that simply felt different and strange, she'd be able to slowly put them together into something new.

This flicker of hope, in the dim isolation, felt wild and sad.

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