Sabrina unpacked quickly, annoyed as she realized all the things she'd left behind in her haste. Well, with luck, this wouldn't be a long trip. She half hoped it would turn out to be a false alarm. As much as she wanted Malvarak to be captured and treated for his illness, she didn't want Ford exposed to the various horrors the Pharon system held.
She could hardly bear to remember what the crystal contamination had done to her, the nightmares that had made her afraid to sleep, the waking horrors that she had begun to fear would conquer her sanity. How much worse it would have to be for Ford, whom she'd once heard referred to as the most crystal-sensitive being in the galaxy, after the Guardian. Well, and now the Inheritor, she supposed. She tried not to imagine Ford in Tirqwin's place, suffering what the doctors had called temporal dyslexia, unable to function in linear time or even to recognize the people closest to him.
I do not want to do this, she realized with a sigh. And yet she had no choice. All her arguments were still true, even if she didn't want them to be. She could not allow herself the luxury of cowardice if it endangered Ford.
"I hope you're not trying to remember how to use that," Ford said from the doorway.
Sabrina jumped a little, startled to find herself holding the blaster in her hand. "I don't think that's something you forget," she said ruefully. "Anyway, I doubt it will do much good. I'd've done better to grab a warmer jacket, or another pair of boots."
Ford's grin was perfunctory. "You're probably right. If you were capable of killing him with that, he would have been dead before I was born."
Sabrina had a terrifying moment's flashback, staring at Malvarak over the barrel of her weapon, grief-stricken and panicked and enraged, yet unable to pull the trigger. Scotty had had to shoot him, so that they could escape with Tirqwin's body. Was that moment one of her greatest failures? She had always tried not to think so.
"I don't expect you to understand," she said, suddenly feeling very alone.
"I am not accusing you of cowardice," he said into the silence that followed.
She looked at him for the first time since he'd come in. "Just sentimentality."
"It's not necessarily a bad thing."
"In a person. It's...inconvenient...for a soldier."
"You've always emphatically denied being one."
"At heart. Sometimes it's been necessary for me to be one, though. And I've tried. But...." Her voice trailed off. When she spoke again, it was in a distant, detached tone. "I had a good chance to shoot him. I really thought I could, for a moment. He had me cornered. Tirqwin's dead body was lying there inches away. He was taunting me about it. Scotty was yelling at me to shoot him. There was...there was something swirling around our feet, something evil, something Pharon. He was coming at me...and then Scotty shot him. In the back. And I've always wondered, was that a burden I should have taken up? Did I push it off on him?"
Ford was quiet for a long moment. "I don't think Scotty would see it that way."
"No," Sabrina said, looking at him again. "I'm very sure he wouldn't." She had a momentary impulse to throw herself into his arms, seeking comfort, but she knew if she showed any sign of weakness, of uncertainty, that he would find a way to leave her on Lthos. She could not risk that. "Well," she said, giving herself a mental shake and putting the blaster back in her duffel, "I've started my story the wrong way round, haven't I? You're probably much more interested in what the Pharon Way felt like, and how the crystal acted on Tirqwin afterward."
"I need to know those things, yes," Ford said. "But if there are issues you haven't faced about that last encounter, then I think I need to know that, too."
"Nothing that will keep me from doing what's necessary," she said. "I just...I used to believe in life, above all. That there was hope in it, so it was worth holding to, no matter what. But as I've gotten older, I've begun to wonder. How many lives could I have saved if I'd killed Malvarak at Pharo? Major Ilyanan's and how many others? Or even further back. If I'd...." She paused. "I never told anyone, not even Scotty. But, that first night after Sribarak was killed, Malvarak tried to kill himself with a knife he'd stolen from the galley."
"You stopped him. You got hurt in the process," Ford said when she faltered. "Everybody knows that. Well, at least I do, and Mother and Father."
"Yes. It was the first time, but not the last. Scotty intervened several times too. That's not...." She sighed. "I stopped him. But I disobeyed Khediva to do it. She ordered me to leave him alone, to let him find his own solution, as she put it. I thought she was being callous. But she understood better than I ever can what the breaking of that link meant to Malvarak. I thought she was being callous. But I didn't realize that I was meddling in something I didn't even begin to understand. Now, after all these years with Mara and Tirqwin and Khediva, I think...she was probably right. That I should not have interfered. Malvarak was trying to close the door on that maddening pain. But I forced it back open, and wedged it there. I asked Khediva, some time ago, why she never tried to circumvent me. She could have helped Malvarak kill himself, or killed him herself, many times when I wasn't there with him. She told me that she was afraid if she did, I would be so outraged that I would leave. And Tirqwin and Mara both needed me. Me and Scotty. I held her hostage, Ford, and never even realized it. And Malvarak suffered for it. And how many others have suffered at his hands, because of that?"
"Sabrina...you can't blame yourself for what he's done. You did what you thought was right. You can't second-guess yourself like this, or you'll drive yourself mad."
"No, I don't blame myself, not really. I mean, the person I was then could not have done anything differently. It's more that I now realize I did him a great wrong, Ford. A horrible wrong, something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, much less a friend. So I can never hate him for the wrongs he's done me, because he can't even a score like that. Maybe...maybe the only redemption for me is the rejection of that previous decision. Maybe the only right thing I can do is to end the madness I forced him to endure."
"And thereby punish yourself?" Ford added wryly. "I think you're doing enough of that already."
"It's not about that. It's about...facing up to the responsibilities I've always pushed off on others, so I could keep my own hands clean."
Ford grimaced and pushed his hands into his pockets, pacing a small circle. "I want to reject that conclusion, with every instinct I've got," he said finally. "I just can't think of the words to make you see why it's wrong."
"Because you've been taught all your life that I was a heroine."
"No." He twitched a little smile at her. "I hardly think of that person as you anymore, really. I think you once described her as a construct. Part of you, but not the whole. I don't believe in your publicity, Sabrina, any more than you do. Not after practically living with you for almost two years. It's not that." He paced another tight circle, then halted abruptly. This time he looked at her with an expression of slightly smug triumph. "I've got it!"
Sabrina folded her arms and braced herself. She wished she'd never started this conversation. He was about to tell her something she absolutely did not want to hear, she was sure. "Do tell," she said, trying to keep most of the sarcasm out of her voice.
He took the few steps over to her and focused his bright blue eyes on her. "You," he said slowly, "are an egomaniac, Sabrina Devon."
She stared at him blankly for a moment, unable to process the statement. It was so unlike anything anyone had said to her for the past several years that she wasn't sure she'd heard him right at first. "W-what?"
"Everything has to be about you, doesn't it? Didn't it occur to you that the people you say you pushed your burdens off onto might have wanted them, for their own reasons? Or if not that, then don't you think they knew it was necessary, in the larger picture? You were the one who got picked to stand up on that pedestal. You had to keep your hands clean. Not out of self-righteousness, but out of necessity. So that a beaten-down, war-weary, despairing people with their civilization on the edge of collapse could have one ray of hope, one pure thing, to hold onto. That was your role, but you couldn't play it unless you believed it, unless you had a clear conscience. The people around you knew that. Scotty, Rayland, Tassan...tell me the truth, didn't they look out for your interests more than you did?"
"Well...they were certainly more concerned with my image than I was, most of the time."
"Precisely my point. Oh, I'm not saying they didn't care about you or your peace of mind. But you can't convince me that was their only consideration." He chuckled. "You did start to believe your own publicity, Sabrina! Admit it: holding all that power in your hands made you really start to believe that you were controlling things!"
"Of all the things I felt during the Regency, in control was not prominently featured!" she retorted. "Geez, Ford, leave the psychology to me, okay? I am not an egomaniac."
"Sorry, I forgot. I'm in the presence of one of the great modern martyrs. Tell me, do you really believe that, Sabrina?"
Sabrina bit back an angry response. "You're trying to make me angry so I won't go with you to Pharo!" she accused, as calmly as she could manage.
Ford laughed. "No, Sabrina. I'm making you angry because I can be a real jerk sometimes. And because I was curious. It's not about you, Sabrina. Everything in the universe isn't, you know." He turned toward the door, then glanced back over his shoulder, tossing a grin at her and ignoring her seething expression. "Most of it's about me!"
Sabrina couldn't decide whether to laugh, flip him off, or shoot him. She settled for no reaction at all, deciding that would irritate him the most. But he never looked back to see it.
She calmly counted to ten after he was gone, knowing that timing was important. If she went after him too quickly, they couldn't ignore the argument they'd been having. If she waited too long, he would think she was upset and sulking, and she made it a rule never to let him know when he upset her. He already knew her weaknesses all too well; she tried not to give him any more ammunition.
It was a little like she and Scotty had been years ago, before his renewal, when almost everything was a competition between them. Now she could rarely be in her brother's presence without remembering what it was like to grieve for his death, and Scotty felt a vague guilt about being the cause of her grief. They no longer walked on eggshells with each other, but things were not as easy and natural as they should have been. Maybe if they spent more time together, she thought with a sigh. But their lives were so separate, even more so, somehow, than during their years on Earth. She made a silent resolve to try harder to be part of Scotty's life when they got back.
Until then, Ford was her primary responsibility, she recalled with another sigh. And she had things to tell him, critical information about the mission that had to be conveyed no matter how irritated she was with him. She squared her shoulders and went out onto the control deck.