#aden skirata | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

izzyovercoffee · 5 years ago

Text

What is agony?

Agony is being forcefully cracked to let the light in.

It’s the jagged snow far beyond freezing that slices open exposed skin as easily as a serrated kad to the hide of shatual. It's watching the red bleed in through pristine white and hiss the last stretch of heat before freezing in place.

A curl of steam risen off the melting snow to dissipate in the breeze.

A’den takes to the hunts like a man on the run. Like someone caged a little too long who’s learned to hold his tongue and control the shakes and ease the jerk and stagger in his limbs until he’s found permission to go outside. A bare hand to the snow, a grimace to the fire, a palm to his knives.

The shatual smokes as it cooks. His vod would say it’s a matter of chemistry. Go off on a tangent if A’den asked, explain the inner workings of meat and fire and something about how the blood runs in the shatual, how it burns from the meal it ate to become the meal on his plate.

It’s why he hunts alone.

Enough to feed a family like his---six families in one, hidden in a box in the ground. He doesn’t always get so dark when he thinks about things, but he didn’t get the okay to hunt in a long, long time. Needed at home. Needed abroad. Needed to take a skip across space and land boots first on duracrete in a city of a different name only a standard year ago.

We don’t leave brothers behind, he knows. Hears it in his head, in the dark of night, as he turns the roast over the fire. But that wasn’t the truth of it, and the truth might as well be as barbed and serrated as the kad he used to butcher his dinner.

Agony, he knows, is sitting in pristine quarters halfway across the galaxy knowing your wife’s dead because your father called her into a warzone instead of let her go home. Agony is not knowing she floats deathless in a vat of bacta that does nothing for her because no one can figure out what to do next.

The logs crack and spark under the open sky. Starless, despite the absence of light pollution on Mandalore. Starless bodes poorly. Starless says unlucky.

He wasn’t always a superstitious man.

It comes to him in the night. The discomfort. The sweats. The anxiety that creeps up with the walls enclosed and no matter how tall the ceiling stretches the itch in the back of his mind knows he’s underground. He’s underground.

Except he’s not, out here.

Turn the spit, and listen to the steam hiss and the wood crack as the meat cooks. Think about nothing but the winds over the salt flats, the winds that’s traveled over the mountains and into the valley and between the trees to reach the snow he rests in.

He can’t even tell Darman he’s sorry, because it’s not his choices to be sorry about. But he thinks about it anyway. Thinks about it as the smoke rises up, and burns in his vision. Fades into the dark, rising into the starless sky.

His vod used to say, a starless sky means their ancestors turned their backs on them. They’ve turned their gaze, and look away, and that’s when justice will be done. Meted out between averted gazes, uncompromising in their refusal for sympathy.

A’den knows it’s just a phenomenon that happens, this far south, from time to time. Knows it’s got nothing to do with ancestors or dead gods or old mand’alore. But when he can’t sleep, close to a fire and over a kill, he can’t help but wonder what if. What if.

So he keeps the things he agonizes over locked deep inside his chest, and instead pulls the meat off the fire to eat his dinner in silence.

#this has also been sitting in my drafts for a while #and there's no more editing to do to it. idk how i feel about it but it is what it is #writing: mine #c: A'den Skirata #c: Aden Skirata

38 notes · View notes

mynightingalecomplex · 5 years ago

Text

Don’t Get Too Comfortable

Ok, so here’s a (not so little) fic I’ve been toying with. It’s long, so I’m going to break it into parts. I default to Pre-Disney+ Mandalorians, so the helmets are not an issue.

Synopsis: Just off a successful hunt, Jesse Libarra finds herself traveling in company with another Mandalorian, Aden Nasreyc. The two Mandalorians are looking forward to a few days of rest on a backwater planet but, unknown to them, the Black Sun have followed Aden and are intent on exacting their revenge on the man who killed their leader.

Tags: previous injury, broken ribs, exhaustion, field medicine

Link to glossary

Link to illustrations:

Part One

Part Two

Aden floated up from dreamless sleep into a fuzzy, pink semi-wakefulness. Dreams still niggled about the edges of his mind and his eyelids were stuck shut, but he could feel the pillow under his head and the blankets twisted through naked legs. It had been so long since he had awakened in a bed --an actual bed!-- that he allowed himself to simply lie there without wondering where he was, how he’d gotten there, or who was trying to kill him. He couldn’t remember any reason to get up, so maybe he’d just lay there for five more minutes….

He surfaced again some time later. Judging by the light, it had been more than five minutes. Again he lay still, luxuriating in the feel of sheets and a foam pillow against a cheek that had slept for three months on the inside of a helmet. Golden light played through his eyelids. The enviro-unit grumbled and whined, insulating the room in a cocoon of noise. He drew up his knee and burrowed into his pillow, searching for the fragments of his dream, but it was fruitless. He was awake now and would find no more sleep for a time.

Aden opened his eyes. Light like liquid gold streamed through the curtains as they danced in the enviro-unit’s breeze. Dust motes floated in a ballet up and down the shafts of sunlight. Somewhere outside he heard a door slam, a voice, but then all was silence. He squinted at the chrono on the table. Fifteen hundred. He yawned. He knew he shouldn’t have slept so long. It was wasteful. It was foolish. It was dangerous. But it had been necessary.

The hunt on Vurus had been long and dangerous. Three months without a single full night’s sleep, of constant watchfulness and wakefulness, living always with the shadow of death, had left him at the edge of his very considerable limits. He had taken privation, discomfort, and mental and physical punishment, and if he hoped to take it again he had to have rest. It had been a risk to spend so long asleep, particularly after the mess at the space port, but in a blaster-proof room with another Mando’ad on his six the risk had been worth taking.

Memory jarred him further into alertness. He rolled up on his elbow to look around the room. There on a pallet between the bed and the window, slept the girl from his half-remembered dream. Feet bare, dressed only in red fatigues, long brown hair pooling loose about her face and shoulders, she lay in the sunlight like a porcelain doll except for the blaster clutched in her tapered fingers.

Suddenly conscious that he was dressed only in his boxers, he sat up to pull the sheets over his naked legs. The pain that had long been his companion, dulled just enough by sleep and medication to pass out of his mind, flashed through his body and left him gasping. Modesty forgotten, he hugged his legs to his chest and buried his face in his knees, all his efforts concentrated on silencing the string of curses that had lined up on his tongue.

When the spots finally cleared from his vision, he found Jesse at his knee, regarding him from the floor with grave green eyes. “Hiya.” She said, her voice low and rusty with sleep. “Do I need to ask you how you're feeling?”

He tried to smile. “Bout as bad as I look.”

“Sheesh. You belong in a hospital, then.”

“You up for breakfast?” His stomach had woken up and was reminding him that the last thing he had eaten was a protein cube on the train to the Vurus spaceport.

She turned to look at the chrono. The golden light caught in her loose chestnut hair, glistening like syrup in a crystal decanter. A rogue corner of his mind ran an imaginary hand through that long brown mane before he could stop it. He shoved the thought back into the depths of his subconscious and pulled the sheets up over his legs, trying to ignore the blush that was creeping up his neck.

“We might could find breakfast around here.�� Jesse said. “I know a little place that caters to late risers.”

“Sounds good to me.”

She tossed his flightsuit at him and headed for the fresher. Gingerly, Aden eased himself into his clothes. Socks, suit, gloves, tak-vest and ammo belt went on with his usual care. Pushing himself to his feet, he stomped into his flat-soled boots and opened the curtains. He stood at the edge of the window -- no point making himself a target-- and looked out, enjoying the peaceful removal from the afternoon bustle and the warmth of the sun on his face.

His stomach growled. He couldn't remember his last meal. There had been a cup of burnt caf at the Vurus police station and a ration cube on the train to the spaceport, but after all the trouble had started an empty stomach had been the least of his problems. He rubbed his ribs absently and winced. Jesse was right; he was slow and getting slower.

“Fresher's open.” Jesse padded out in sock feet, tying off the end of her long brown braid.

“Vore.” He stepped away from the window. He looked reluctantly at his armor stacked neatly on the chest-of-drawers. “What do you think? Is this a blaster and beskar kind of place, or maybe a little more casual?”

Jesse shrugged. “Depends on how threatening you find greasy eggs and soggy waffles.”

Aden considered this. Battle-ready was all well and good, but three months in full kit left a man feeling more like a sardine than a member of society. It was just a diner, after all, not a drug den. Not even a cantina. And they hadn't been on Dantooine long enough to make any enemies. He bounced once or twice on the balls of his feet, enjoying the unaccustomed lightness. “Maybe just the body plates.” He said. “Just so they know we're Mandos.”

The diner was everything Jesse had promised. Basically a long chrome tube with big glass windows, the diner was alive with beings crowded into red vinyl booths. Waiters, humans and Twi'leks instead of the droids popular on city worlds, bustled about with pots of steaming caf and plates of greasy food, laughing, shouting, and bantering with the customers. Aden felt himself relaxing. This was a small town on a peaceful world, and the sense of community amongst the patrons was almost palpable. It felt like home.

They were seated in a booth along the big front window, working through their second pot of caf. The waitress had looked askance at them at first, but in only chest and knee plates, helmets off and sleeves rolled up, they looked less than threatening. Even in Verad, mercenaries were not unheard of and their money was as good as anyone else's, so here they were in a sticky vinyl booth waiting for their pancakes without drawing any more than an occasional curious glance.

Aden sipped his caf and looked out the window at the dusty street. “Nice place.” He commented. “Better than Vurus, but I'm a country boy at heart.”

Jesse nodded. “Beats durasteel streets and monorails, that's for sure. I grew up in the vhetin'e. Long rolling hills and grass as far as you can see so this always feels like home.”

Aden watched her as she looked out the window. He knew he shouldn’t ask. It was rude and it wasn’t remotely his business, but her sharp, sad, porcelain face and those deft fingers belonged to something more than an itinerant bounty-hunter on a third-class world. “What are you doing trapped out here, Jesse?” Even he could hear the despair in his voice. ”Don’t you have family waiting for you?”

“No.” She answered first, then looked away from the window. “No family.” He didn’t think she was going to elaborate. There was no reason she should and he was kicking himself for being a di’kut when she went on. “I was with the GAR before the… before the Empire took over. When Kal Skirata and his boys bugged out they went with hundreds, thousands of others, commandos and regular troopers too. The Empire lost almost a third of their fighting force, but they kept it quiet. Whole regiments disappeared at a time, and most of them headed for Mandalore. It was chaos.” She looked down at the cup in her hands but he knew she wasn't seeing it. “One of my boys got out. One didn't. Two didn't even try.”

Aden tried to think of a way to ask the obvious question without further insult, gave up, and asked anyway. “What about you? You bugged out with the rest?”

She shook her head. “Not a chance. I’d have stayed. I wasn’t there to serve the Republic. I was there cause my boys were there and it was a steady paycheck. What did I care what symbol the boys had painted on their armor?

“No, when the dust settled, the Imps repainted the troops that were left, brought in the last battalions of Kamino-trained soldiers, and all us irregular non-coms showed up the next morning to find our clearance revoked, our quarters occupied, our possessions confiscated, and our boys renumbered and reassigned.”

They sat in silence for a long moment, Jesse lost in thought, Aden shocked at this first-hand account of what had been only rumors through the Mando’a community. Finally Jesse shook herself and the gloom that clouded her face vanished as if it had never been. “So, here I am, foot-loose and fancy-free, back doing what’s best for the one who's most important.” She tapped her chest plates. “Me.”

Aden didn’t know what to say, but he was rescued from shoving his foot further into his mouth by the arrival of the waitress with their order. After months of hard work on nothing but field rations and will power, Aden felt he could eat an entire nerf by himself, horns, hooves and all, but he had settled on ordering basically the entire menu, because his momma had raised him with some manners. Werris eggs, fried nerf bacon, sausage, crispy potato patties, and stacks of waffles with cream and slices of shefna fruit on top all appeared from the kitchen together, still sizzling in pools of grease or dripping with sticky Alderaanian molasses. It took two waitresses to bring it all to the table.

After that, there was no more conversation for a while. Talking was a waste of time with food going cold on the table. Jesse was polishing off the leftover half of his third waffle - - he considered it more a gift to a good friend than an admission of defeat-- when she spoke suddenly, pointing an accusatory fork at him. “All right, pretty boy. Now it's your turn. What's a handsome fellow like you doing on Dantooine without enough money to buy a bed for the night?”

He winced, but it was only fair. “Oh, you know how far money goes in this economy. Gotta work where you can.” He tried a nonchalant shrug, knowing it wouldn't work.

“Vurus to Dantooine's a long jump with no money in your pocket.” She rejoined. ”And this isn't the place to come to turn a quick credit.”

No, he thought, but it might be a good place to stage a tactical withdrawal. But of course he wasn't going to tell Jesse that. No sense in getting her mixed up in whatever trouble he'd gotten himself into. “It's as close as I could get to Qilura on a passenger ship.” That at least was true.

“Family out there?”

“A sister. Brother's wife.” He answered immediately, glad to have something he could talk openly about. “She's not Mando, but she did right by him and she's trying to do right by his boy, so I do what I can.” ‘What he could’ meant going hungry and traveling forth-class on passenger ships so Miran and her son could live a step above the poverty line, but he could see Jesse understood that and wasn't going to ask him to elaborate. “It's not the kind of help I'd like to give her, but it's help she needs and it's the least I can do.”

Jesse nodded and scraped the last of the whipped cream off his plate with her fork. “Good for you. It's hard when they're not Mando'ade. How do you get from here to Qilura? That's another two jumps from here.”

He shrugged. “There's usually some freighter or other going that way. I'm not above hauling cargo and swabbing decks if it means a free hyperspace jump.”

“Makes sense.” Jesse said. “Tell you what. I've got a little extra on me this time, so how about I stake you a day's rations and a hyperspace jump and drinks'll be on you next time we run into each other.”

“Jesse, I…” Aden was at a loss. What could he say? How could he accept? But, on the other hand, how could he refuse? “That would be… “

Then the world exploded.

#star wars #mandalorian #mando #jesse libarra #wounded #injured #cared for #field medicine #caretaker #treated #broken ribs #explosion #hurt #collapse

12 notes · View notes