Expanded Horizons: Beyond the Blue

Something Lost

Andris sat back in his chair and sighed. His sales shot through the roof, again, yet he couldn't place why he had been feeling so atrocious lately. His gilded office, a monument to his successes, his kids taking over the business and creating a legacy, nothing seemed to do it lately. Not since he heard about that trio running all about the continent.

He stood from his padded chair and walked over to his window on the corner of the building, looking out over Warren from the mountainside. The cold mountain air pushed dust and snow from his peak down to the city below, like it was him giving them their main source of water. He knew it wasn't, but it was a metaphorical thing for him.

"Can it really be..?"

Twenty-one years ago, maybe with a few months tacked on, Andris gave his boy up to a passing monk and never really thought about him again. The first and only time it crossed his mind was when he heard about the destruction of the order he handed his son off to. It wasn't really his fault it happened that way, but he still felt guilty at the time.

And now, there was talk that the companion to Galactica was none other than a monastery survivor, right around twenty-one years of age.

"Stella!"

Through the door, Andris's secretary burst in at the sudden call, a worried expression on her face. When she saw him standing at the window, looking out longingly, her shoulders dropped and she sighed.

"Sir, you've been in a funk lately," she said, walking over.

"I'm sure you figured out why."

"Yes, sir, I have."

"Do you judge me?"

"Not my place, sir."

"Stella, what have you found out about him?" Andris asked, turning around. "Is he... could he really be..?"

"Possibly."

Andris looked down and turned back to the window to watch the snow blow over into the city below. The winds curled and twisted before him, made visible only by the snow dust in the air whipping about like Galactica with a flail on her heyday. He breathed in deep and closed his eyes.

"If he truly is alive, I must see him."

"Sir?"

"I have to know that the boy I left is okay."

"Is that such a good idea, sir?" Stella asked. "It's been twenty-one years. He was a street thug after the order, a hired fist for Galactica, basically. Is it safe?"

"Does it matter?"

"It will to your kids."

"They are established," Andris said resolutely. "I gave them everything they needed and more. I helped them find success. For him... I did nothing. I gave him less than nothing; I gave him away. Because he was an inconvenience to a younger me."

"And what will trying to do something now achieve?"

"I don't know. Maybe I can help him, some way. I have my resources."

"Does he need your help, though?"

"Only one way to find out."

"Why are you really going to find him, sir?" Stella asked in a serious tone. "Is it for him?"

"Is anything we do ever really for anyone else, then?" Andris asked. "Is altruism dead? Is seeking justice meaningless? Is making amends pointless?"

"Is your motive pure?" Stella countered. "Or is the motive not relevant, so long as the act has a good outcome?"

"This is why I hired you, Stella," Andris said with a light grin. "You don't let me go without thinking."

"Someone has to think around here," Stella said with a chuckle.

Andris grabbed his hat and coat and went out the door of his estate to the patio overlooking the city. He wondered, off in that wild blue yonder, had he ever crossed paths with his boy before? In his trips to Joustbergh and beyond, had he ever walked past the boy and not even realized? For all the good he tried to do; charity work, education, sanitation, monster-clearing; had he passed by a chance to do right for a second time?

"I have done some good in my life," Andris said, pulling his coat in. "Now I must go and do what is right."

Andris walked to his private lift and descended the mountain to the world below, ready to face his son and his greatest failure, and do whatever he had to do to make it right.