KISMET ─ vento aureo.

INTERLUDE V ★ ⁺ SEARCH FOR TRUTH

"Why would you do that?" he asked.

Abbacchio didn't know how to arrange his face. "What do you mean?"

"You could be anything else, and you decide to be a GA? For what?" Abbachio's father ran a hand over his face and sighed deeply. A part of Abbacchio curdled at the sound.

It was at that moment that Abbacchio realized how tired and drawn-out his father looked. He had retired early a few years ago, congratulated heartily for years of dedicated service, but his father had never settled into the pride that most other retired officers did. Abbacchio didn't know what it was exactly. Bitterness? Resentment? But those two words didn't go along with what he knew about the Galactic Authorities.

Abbacchio was confused. "I want to serve the galaxy. I thought you would be proud."

"Do you have other options? Being a GA might not work out."

"It is going to work out. I'm willing to make it work out."

Abbacchio's father looked like he was debating with himself. "You're young," he said at last. "You don't understand things yet. When you get older, you'll see that things aren't black and white. Some days, you can't pick apart right and wrong. They're confused together, and you spend nights wondering if you made the right choice."

"I know things are complicated," Abbacchio said. "But I want to serve and protect people. You taught me that. I can't think of anything else I'd rather do."

"What if people aren't worth serving or protecting? You haven't seen a lick of what people are capable of. Being a GA makes you lose—" His father didn't finish the sentence. He turned his face from his son, staring somewhere a dozen light years away.

In his mind's eye, Abbacchio could still see his father dressed sharply in his GA uniform. He'd never seen that uniform askew, never seen it torn and dirty, never looked at it with anything other than respect and admiration.

"I want to be a Galactic Authority Officer," Abbacchio said, resolutely.

His father sighed again. It had never occurred to Abbacchio to ask why he had retired from service early.

- ✦ -

Abbacchio got accepted. He left as soon as he got the notice, ready to prove his father wrong, although on what he didn't know. He fit in quickly with the other cadets, just as brash and headstrong as any of them. All GA cadets had a healthy dose of self-righteousness and it was probably that that led them to being a cadet in the first place. Abbacchio lived and breathed the life. He ate the dry food and slept on the hard cots, performed the gruelling drills and rattled off laws and bylaws. He accompanied GA's on patrols sharp-eyed and ready, pointing out misconduct and misbehaviour by the textbook. Things were very black and white then, and Abbacchio thought they couldn't be easier.

His teachers and supervisors nodded approvingly. Very promising, this one. Once he graduated, he would make a superb GA.

At the academy, Abbacchio was assigned to a partner, the one directly under his name in roll call. To this day, Abbacchio couldn't remember what his name was. All he remembered was that he was small, slight, and had cornflower-blue eyes, blue as any hologram made them out to be. The other cadets called him Tuft, because of the tuft of hair that stood up on the back of his head.

Abbacchio and Tuft worked well together. They didn't speak much to each other, which suited Abbacchio just fine. Tuft did what Abbacchio told him to do. He never questioned him or tried to argue. He had a backbone, but he seemed to recognize that Abbacchio knew what he was doing, so he let him take the lead.