Unplugging

The stars shone one last time in my eyes. The force of the solar winds pushed me and caressed me one last time. The strong pull of the thrusters, so intimately controlled and known that they seemed like my own legs, directed me to the Amarr station where I would dock for the last time.
As the docking procedures advanced, I couldn't help but recall all that had happened in this three long years. The found, the lost, the friends, the enemies. The success. The failure.
The Ordo and the Brothers and Sisters in it.

I had to admit I had abandoned the room almost like a fugitive, a shadow running once the attention was turned elsewhere. But, for one long, heart breaking moment, I realized I no longer belonged in there. Plans of future were being discussed, drawn, marked. Personalities were clashing, and great minds working around each others.
I was just a shadow from the past. I had nothing left to say. I had nothing left to live. They had to move on, and that was something I was only a burden to. So I crept out, almost dashing through the door. The known halls continued to work around me as the Legio proceeded with their business as usual, uncaring or unknowing what it all meant now. To them, it was the same, just another day in work.
And so it had to be, they only lived the present afterall, and I no longer belonged to it.

Entering the pod one last time had been almost as painful as the tortures I had suffered so many times. Even when I was in the chambers of the Theology Council, I kept hope, and it had brightened even my darkest days. And when it turned true... but tonight it was different. There was no hope from this. Two jumps was all I had left.

And now, here I am, in the Amarr station I know so well, the Emperor Family's one. Under the scrutiny of several members of the Theology Council, eager all of them to get rid of a problem. And one doctor and his aides, moving around me. I don't get to feel the pain of the cut, but I do sense it in the back, around the plug that connects me to the world I've known for so many years.
Three years ago, the dreams I had, the plans... all started with that same plug. And now I was losing it.
As they pulled, I felt it all go away, washed down the drain: my access to the comm units, eternity, my ability to command thousands of tons to my will. My past. All of that was no longer to really be mine. I had had my chance, and now it was my time to pay for what I had done.
It was almost poetic.
Those that I had tried so hard to protect were taking it all away from me, incapable of understanding what it all meant. Blind, except for what was directly written. I felt it move as it was taken completely out, and separated carefully from my spine, from my brain. I almost felt how I lost it, if I were not so drugged it would have been like losing a sense, like becoming blind and deaf, like a door shutting. They only smiled, proud that they had ridden themselves of a problem.
But they hadn't. The Ordo survived, and that alone served to keep me from breaking. They would keep on, strive on, and in the darkness to come, they would be ready. I was only a small sacrifice in exchange for that. Another sacrifice I was willing to make.
They lifted me, cleaned me and introduced me to my new robes. A monk. Who would have said that the son of a slave merchant, turned pilot, would end a monk in the deserts of Mabnen?

So here I am, among the sand, and under the constant pull of gravity. I'm almost starting to get used to it after so many months here. Life in the monastery is simple, organized, like a clock. The mind has no time to be free, no time to think. That's what they wanted, after all.
And yet, when night falls, I stay out. They wonder why I do that, but their small minds can't understand. They only think of the crop, and the book to be transcribed.
But I look up, into the stars, where I once was like a God. And I seek those small red lights that indicate the position of the station. It is impossible for me to see them, of course, anyone can tell you that, and yet I am sure they are there, open to my eyes. And, in my dreamlike states, I think I can even see the golden ships of the Ordo entering and leaving, strong and decided in their eternal duty.
And not even the sound of the bells calling for all monks to retire to their chambers can erase that last smile from my mouth.