Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

These days nothing feels real to Hartro. She's back on the ship, everything should be fine.
But nothing is.

The structure of Stellar Firma feels so tiring now, a place where, to live, you must prove yourself worthy, you must claw your way through others to rise up a corporate ladder. Just so one day you can stop being afraid that they'll replace you.

In her captivity she's learned to fight in a different way. There living was won through bloodied knuckles, broken ribs, and bruised everywhere. You would either be killed or hurt hurt hurt so much that you almost wish you were.

And yet Hartro hasn't given up, she's torn her path forward through the corpses of others her entire life, now it was just a little more literal.

Why is the difficult part now she's back home? Why is it difficult to move through the tiredness that gnaws at her very core, why doesn't she remember all the conversations she's had today. She knows she has done her job and talked talked talked, because she hasn't been demoted yet.

But everything just feels blurry, except the nights. When she knows she's being watched as she attempts to cry herself to sleep.

She cannot sleep.

Is this even still worth it?

Chapter Text

Hartro hasn't been properly rested in what feels like years.
She can feel the deep gnawing edges of exhaustion deep within her bones. It feels like it's calling her, beckoning her to just lie down and go away.

Even though she has found her solution to the violent nightmares that leave her shaking in her bed in cold sweat, breathing heavily and reminding herself over and over again that she's no longer in the arena and will never go back, even now she trains for hours on end just to collapse on her bed and sleep the whole night away in a moment, even though all of that, the tiredness at her core doesn't go away.

Imogen says it is because she's pushing her body to its limits, Imogen being Imogen that is probably correct.

Hartro still prefers this over the nightmares.

But, one can only drown their life so far in work, arts and crafts, and exercise, and often Hartro is still left wandering the long halls of stellar firma pushing away the memories she doesn't want.

Many people would probably turn to other ways to numb their mind at this point, alcohol, drugs, something like that, but Hartro spent years watching what those can do to a person and she's dead set on not becoming another Trexel Geistman.