It is at the bottom of everything that she looks up and gauges her life before her, after her, all around her. She sees destitution in the form of a falling-apart ship that flies just barely, she sees laughter of a full crew relaxing in-between bounties, she sees the aforementioned crew going their separate ways until she is just herself again and on and on.

Before her is what's behind her, but in reverse. She keeps this hope that eventually they will all reunite, even the dead man with a fake eye and acerbic humour, she keeps this intention deep inside that she will seek them all out in adequate time and force them together again, even if she has to dig them up one by one by one by one.

See: necrophilia.

But it wouldn't be necrophilia, because there is nothing sexual about this, nothing perverse at all. There is just this overwhelming need to wrap her arms around everyone in turn and squeeze until they gasp for breath ("damn woman, let go!" or "I'm not giving your cigarettes back, you know"). So, nothing perverse at all.

This need lingers with her in every casino, every deadbeat bar that has a broken sign spelling something without vowels and probably meaning something lewd. Every place she sets her head she focuses her energies on paying attention to her surroundings, waiting to hear something that places at least one of them so she can start in her quest of reuniting them all.

Besides, this galaxy (and all of the others) isn't so large, is it?

See: futility.

.
She adjusts her foot slightly to the left, lets her anklet do the work of a thousand amateur gamblers combine into something that wins her a large amount of woo-longs, and smiles that pretty smile at the pit boss' wary look. She just won enough to get to the next planet, and maybe put a little on her medical bill all the same.

(She never puts anything on the medical bill.)

Shrieking draws attention in the north side of the casino, somewhere near the buffet and too far from the loading docks. Another smile, this one in fond recollection, because that is sure to be a result of a bounty being caught, of a criminal being foiled in the scheme of things for a paltry sum that will barely get the hunter food for the next week.

Someone yells about looking out for the child, and she turns to the noise. The child, what child, where is this child?

She rushes forward, pushes through the crowd without apology, and comes to the scene of the chaos. Yes, a child. A young woman, a girl dressed as a boy, barefoot and dancing around someone old enough to be her father and laughing like a loon.

This is what she's been waiting for, this is what she's been planning for, this is what she looks up at from the bottom of her life, scrabbles up the side of the pit with a jaw set and teeth clenched together so she won't bite off her tongue in anger.

She steps forward, and calls to them.

"So, you found the corpse yet?"