Changing

[Arya Ravenwing]

<center>Right Before Your Eyes
Hoobastank

When the door shuts
Don’t worry about me
Its not attention that I want from you
I need you to trust who I’m gonna be
And in everything I’m going to do

Cause I’m not afraid
Of what I don’t know
For understanding is all that I earn
What is for sure is I’m gonna to go
I’m gonna to live and I’m going to learn

And I know there will be mistakes that I will make
But I know they’re not worse than chances I don’t take, take
Right before your eyes I am changing, changing
New life on the inside I am changing, changing

When the door shuts
It shuts in front of me
A new person that I have become
I follow my heart to my destiny
But living in fear and sorrow is done

There will be no more feeling that I’m all alone
I will surround myself with things that help me grow, grow
Right before your eyes I am changing, changing
New life on the inside I am changing, changing

Right before your eyes I am changing, changing
New life on the inside I am changing, changing
Right before your eyes I am changing, changing
New life on the inside I am changing, changing

Right before your eyes
Right before your eyes

Inside the circle that has been ascribed to Life we tread, never changing, always holding to our course. Fearing to come out of our comfort zones, we walk on. It is only a habit: we do the same things we detest in ourselves time and time again because we don’t take the strength to change paths. We look ourselves in the mirror and hate what we see, but we still never change. We always want to be who we want, not who we need to be. But sometimes, the circle kinks... suddenly our comfort zones are kicked aside. And we have to rise up and be something we never thought we would be.</center>



A ragged cough tore through the air, followed by a choked off sob. Arya bit her knuckles to silence the wail that was caught in her throat. It gathered into a lump that seemed impossible to swallow, aching in her trachea. Silently the tears fell from her stinging eyes, dripping down her cheeks to leave traces in the dried sweat.

Thankfully it was warm, although it was a little too warm. Her clothes were in a pile next to the mattress she was sitting on, but they had been cut off her with a sharp blade - they were of no use to her any more. Arya pushed back her hair from her eyes with a shaky hand, and tried to scramble closer to the window. It was boarded up from the outside, but there had to be a way -

She pulled as hard as she could, but the handcuff that held her ankle to the floor at the end of the bed held tightly. As it always did. She reminded herself mentally not to pull too hard or the cuts that she'd already inflicted would get worse, and the flesh around them would swell making her predicament even worse.

Not that it can get worse! She coughed again, and curled up into the fetal position at the end of the mattress. Everything was clean. Spotless. Except for her. Arya hugged her arms around her body, cringing at every sound she heard through the door. There was a scream, long and drawn out, that chilled her blood and caused her to clap her hands over her ears.

It ended suddenly, with a surprised gasp. Arya cried.

[Arya Ravenwing]

"Okay, try it now!" Arya called up to Threepio, who was sitting timidly in the cockpit. She was dangling upside down between decks, legs hooked around some sturdy pipes. The engines whirred, warming up, and then whined as they subsided into inactivity. "Krasst!" She banged on an interface with her hydrospanner, but that only made her angrier. "I said try it!"

"Mistress Arya, I did try it! I must protest, I am not a pilot -"

"You've got the ability programmed into you, Professor!" Arya twisted around and checked a mass of tubing that ran through the decking from sublights to the cockpit. "Damn fluidics. Where is the frelling fluid?!"

She angled herself right way up again, and pulled herself out of the hole in the floor. "Threepio I'm going down to the hold to check the fluidic capacitor." The system had been cheap (it was old technology) but had given her nothing but trouble. If there was something clogging up the lines... Arya stomped down the ladder between the main deck and the cargo hold.

"Kraaaasst..." She splashed her way to the capacitor, and cracked open the maintanence panel, even though she was slogging through the evidence of it's failure. "Frelling got to be kidding me."

[Threepio]

C-3PO, human/cyborg relations, pressed the intercomm button on the pilot's console. "Mistress Arya, how is it going?"

There were a few wet splashes, in reply, and then: "Emperor's black bones in a bloody pile of Sith spit! Threepio, we're going to have to replace the entire system before we're going anywhere."

Threepio did some mental calculations. "Unless I am mistaken, that will empty your bank account."

[Arya Ravenwing]

She sighed, wiping oily green residue off her hands with a rag. "No frelling kidding. Get s'Ilancy on the comm, I'm heading up. Looks like we're not going to make it to the party this time."