Liam Traymoore
Liam “Tray” Traymoore aka Operative Grimm
Memory’s a funny thing. Slippery and veiled one minute, crystal and haunting the next.
I have perfect recollection of my hands on the detonator just before the explosion shredded them into extinction. Seventeen months ago that was. This morning, I couldn’t remember what coffee was called. Chopper I called it. “Give me a cup of mother crackin’ CHOPPER!” I screamed at the Sullustan behind the counter for the fourth time. It didn’t elicit any improved recollection from the misfiring brain cells or a better response from the paling java jockey.
Memory. It dances a tango of its own free will when you experience a detonite explosion at ground zero and survive.
The sinister truth that Liam Traymoore can’t recall, is that he wasn’t trying to disarm the ordinance which nearly killed him. He was the one who planted it.
A considerable Empire asset was being relocated to a secure Rebel holding facility for further interrogation, and Tray was dispatched to make sure the asset didn’t survive the transfer. Or more accurately, the Empire operative codenamed Grimm was assigned the terminal task. The orders were simple. If a clean execution could not be orchestrated, the entire wing holding the prisoner was to be blown into the vacuum of space.
I can still taste the bacta when I cough hard enough. They say it’s my imagination. I say, screw you. Spend seventeen straight days in the tube and then tell me I’m a liar.
They called me a hero. Gave me back my hands. Then I realized it was just so I could fill out deports and be rebriefed since my speech was slow to return. The ‘medical discharge’ came soon after, once they realized I couldn’t serve the cause safely any longer. And for my own good of course. Bastards.
Tray lost his left eye in the explosion as well, but his Rebel superiors never offered to replace that, as it didn’t serve their purposes. Likely they would have plucked out his remaining eyeball if they had known his alternate vocation. He liked the constant reminder the empty socket conveyed though that everything had two sides, light and dark. That there were no easy answers. That we’re all a little blind when it comes to understanding duality.
Maybe someday I’ll get it all back. Living with the brain stutter isn’t easy, but living with the holes is hoarder. I used to believe that our memories defined us, mud us who we were. Now I understand it’s our actions that do that, each and every day.