Worst bourbon you got (open)

[Sanis Prent]

I wanted the bad stuff. Nothing top shelf would do. Even the well drink stock was too good for me. I was in for self-induced punishment.

The barkeep gave me a funny look, an unsaid disclaimer to keep me away from the swill below the counter. But as he looked me over, he could tell I was sure about what I was after. The cheap stuff came in nondescript, generic plastic bottles, with screw-on caps and labels that were sloppily applied at haphazard angles. Sure, the stuff looked as amber-hued as any Corellian vintage, but it probably didn't call a wooden barrel home. A Nar Shadaa bathtub was more likely the answer. In short, it might get you drunk, but in no uncertain terms did it explain to you that it hated you. The snobs would tell you that you shouldn't shoot it, shouldn't mix it, and simply should avoid it. I'd come to appreciate the stuff. After all, poured over the rocks, served with guilt and chased with regret, it did the job better than most. At any rate, the barkeep understood. People drink for so many reasons, and sometimes the reasons change for the drinker.

I settled down with my hooch, and poured it over a low glass with a pair of ice cubes. There I sat, waiting for the ice to melt a bit, and for my thoughts to align. I had a lot to think about tonight.

[Abagael Zellan]

"Sanis Prent."

An unbelieving voice sounded from behind the decidedly depressed-looking man. Abagael Zellan squinted her eyes like she needed to confirm that it was really him. It had been years since she'd seen the scoundrel, way back in the day when they'd both been younger and more naive.

Slinking to a barstool beside Prent's, Abby sat down, peering through blonde tresses at the mopy man. He sure didn't look as if he were aging well. In fact, from the looks of the bottle of inexpensive liquor stationed in front of him, Sanis was either losing his mind, or halfway to rock bottom and falling fast. Why else would anyone with credits to spare--and he did have credits to spare--drink that kind of grog?

It didn't seem appropriate to launch a conversation after over a decade of absence. Hell, Abby doubted he even remembered her but there didn't look like there was much else she could do now. She'd already sat down beside him, for frells sake.

Frowning, the woman raised an eyebrow at his choice of drink.

"Are you seriously considering drinking that?"

[Sanis Prent]

"It was good enough for us back then."

I knew her voice. Even still, I turned to face her.

"How you been, Abby?"

[Abagael Zellan]

"Fine."

Abby reached down to her purse and rooted through it, pulling out a piece of gum. She'd stopped smoking while pregnant with her daughter and was trying to keep the new abstinence habit up. Still, within a few minutes a pack of stimcigs were out and on the bartop.

"You don't look so good though."

And Sanis didn't. Abby knew that the man was bound to look older, but there was more than age on his shoulders tonight. Likewise, it wasn't nostalgia that was making him revert back to God awful boozing.

Abby raised an eyebrow at him.

"Maybe we used to drink it Sanis, but we're both a long way from back then. What's with the self-punishment?"

[Sanis Prent]

"What's with yours?"

I glanced to her swollen belly.

"Didn't figure you were much of the settling down type."

[Abagael Zellan]

Abby shrugged, hoping it came across casually. She really didn't want the conversation veering this way.

"Some things you don't plan. It's not like I'm Betty Crocker, I have a job and a life, believe it or not."

She glanced at her cigarettes and chewed her gum with a little more vigor, blue eyes still as hard as they'd always been. Leaning forward, Abby fixed Sanis' profile with a catty look.

"If you're going to dodge the question all night, I'd like to know so I can prepare myself for small talk."

[Sanis Prent]

"Did it ever hurt?"

I took a pull from my glass, setting it aside.

"You know, when I left? I didn't really bother to look back, I guess. I was bad about that."

Another drink, and I was ready to look at her.

"Maybe this is my penance."

[Abagael Zellan]

"What the hell kind of idiot question is that!? 'Did it hurt?'..."

Abby glared at Sanis and pulled a stim from her pack, a lighter appearing from her pocket. The cigarette rested on her lips as she struggled with the silver lighter, flicking it too hard for it to work.

"For the record, yeah, it did. You left me in a bit of a bind, but I got out of it and I got over you."

The stim and lighter were put down on the counter, neither one having been lit. Abby sighed.

"Sanis, we were kids. We didn't know enough about each other, but we did know that the chance of one of us taking off was pretty high. You made your move before I made mine, and if you think that I spent a lot of time crying into my pillow you're an egotistical prick."

He'd finally looked at her after asking the touchy question, and Abby just looked right back.

"And if you want me to believe that you're drinking that dren because of something you did to an old girlfriend however-many-years ago, then you're an idiot too."

[Sanis Prent]

I looked back at the table. There was too much truth there to handle.

"What do you want me to say, then?"

I hazarded meeting her eyes.

"I'm sorry? Hm?"

I knocked back a couple of quick gulps, and returned to looking at her.

"Yeah. I am. For you, for me. For Urky."

I leaned the glass against the side of my face, letting it cool my skin.

"I've frelled over a lot of people since Nar Shadaa, including myself. So much for chasing dreams."

[Abagael Zellan]

It was her turn to look away. The stim seemed easier to light the second time she tried, and Abby took a few moments of the awkward silence to indulge in the redundant motions of smoking. One hand reached out and pulled an ashtray closer, to rest the little cylinder on.

"I don't want... I don't need an apology."

Abby toyed with the edge of the ashtray, scratching a chipped corner with the tip of her nail.

"Truth? I waited a couple weeks after you took off, figuring it was just like the other times. I got up every morning and made a pot of coffee, like you were going to come waltzing in half-drunk. Then one morning I made coffee for one. And that was okay; I was okay."

Abby picked up the stim and ground it into the ashtray.

"Leaving was the best thing you could have done, for the both of us. And the kid..."

She sighed and looked up.

"Let's not do this Sanis. This whole dredging up the past thing is really cliched and you don't look like you need any more fuel to feed whatever fire's driving you tonight. Lets just be grownups.

"... and I'm sorry too."

[Sanis Prent]

I backed off. Seeing all the burnt bridges wasn't helping the melancholy.

"It wasn't you. I don't know what I wanted, but I went after it. Took me all the way here, and then some. I still haven't found it, though. The more money I make, the more problems intensify. Right now, I wish I'd never left Nar Shadaa."

[Abagael Zellan]

"That's the self-pity talking. You'd either be dead or close to it if you'd stayed there. "

Abby frowned.

"Why not take a break? Spend some time figuring out what it is you want?"

[Sanis Prent]

"I can't take a break.

It was a lot different back then. You could get away with laying low on small potatoes. Here & now though, everybody's looking for something. Its harder to call a rain check on the whole thing."

[Abagael Zellan]

She'd known that he would say something along those lines. Abby sighed and gave him a helpless shrug.

"I'm not going to waste time and pretend that I have some kind of answer to your problems, Sanis; I don't. Except I do know where you're coming from."

Abagael moved back on her stool, trying to relieve the pain in her lower back. When her twisting about didn't help she sighed irritably and continued.

"I went through one thing after the other, trying to fill that need, that empty space... law school, marriage, a kid, divorce, it went on and on and on." She shook her head. "But it never went away. There was always that pressure, that fear that if I didn't keep going, I'd never find it, never figure out what it was I was looking for, I'd become a washout. I wasted a lot of time like that. And this,"

Abby gestured at his glass and then the bottle with her glowing stim. She shook her head, blonde hair waving.

"This doesn't help. Makes it worse, you know that. Because unfortunately, you're not in control over this Sanis. You're just along for the ride, until whatever it is you're trying to find, finds you."

She thought of the Order, her new life here. And then she thought of Hayes, and smiled sadly.

"And when it, whatever 'it' is for you, comes... hold on to it. You can lose it again, in the blink of an eye."

She watched him closely for a moment.

"Maybe you already have."

[Sanis Prent]

"Maybe I have."

I spoke barely above a whisper, looking back at my drink. I thought for a moment, about something to say. Some kind of rationalization to show that I was anything but reeling over current events. I filled the uncomfortable silence with another drink instead.

[Abagael Zellan]

Abby's gaze didn't shift from the dishelled man before her. She'd come across something that she hadn't expected, and now the situation called for tact.

"And what are the odds, supposing you have lost something, of getting it back again?"