#i will not be conquered

[therisingdarkness]

5 Times Ghoul Left the Bar Alone, and One Time He Didn’t

Written for @cloned-eyes and for Ghoul and Odessa. I really took my time here cause I wanted it to be perfect. So heads up, it’s like 41 pages. It gets a little heavy here so proceed with caution. Tagging @lune-de-miel-au-paradis because they asked for it XD

ALSO heads up but next chapter is just gonna be like...smut. Lots and lots of smut. I guess if you wanna be tagged for notifications send me an ask and I’ll hold onto your handle. I don’t have a timeline cause I really wanna take my time with it, but if you wanna be tagged for the last update let me know. Once I’m done this is all gonna be posted on Ao3 as well, and I’ll drop the link eventually.

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

PART 4

PART 5

I’m late, Odessa thought as she hurried to replace the bottles of liquor in their proper places on the shelves. Rumi bumped into her from behind, pushing her further against the counter she was already leaning over and almost making her drop the Corellian whiskey. Annoyance shot through her, making her lekku twitch erratically. Rumi gave her a strange look, but said nothing. They were all a little on edge with the sudden and unexpected influx of customers, prompting their boss to have them all scheduled to be working at the same time. They were all exhausted, sweaty, sticky from spilled liquor, and tensions were running at an all time high.

She knew it wasn’t the fault of the customers—four separate battalions had returned to Coruscant at the same time, two having secured an unexpected foothold against the Separatist forces that had the news channels buzzing with excitement. Naturally the clones were looking to celebrate and Odessa refused to hold it against them for going off the rails, even if it meant running herself a little ragged; besides, no matter how irritated or tired she was, it was good to see them laughing and smiling and rough-housing around with another. 

The Republic had suffered too many losses over the past several months—a solid win to bolster spirits and morale, for both the common citizen and the soldiers, had been sorely needed. She only wished her boss had had the foresight to schedule her and the other girls in staggered shifts, instead of the rough sixteen-hour stretches that left her feeling like her bones had liquefied. 

“Odie!” one of the new clones called out, trying to carry a tune as he all but sang out her name. “Ooooodiiiieee! I need another round!”

“I am thinking you are about to be cut off,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Cobra, who was absolutely supporting himself on the shoulders of another, less enthusiastic clone. He grinned at her, tried to wink, and ended up just blinking with both eyes instead. 

“I’m perfectly fine,” he said, swaying gently in place. 

“Mmm, I think not. But you deserve to cut loose, so this one time I am looking the other way. How many?”

“Eight shots, Rotgut!”

Odessa wrinkled her nose at his choice but expertly lined up eight small shotglasses and quickly pulled the Rotgut from beneath the bar, pouring a generous amount into each glass so the liquor spilled over the rim. She wasn’t going to be stingy with servings, not this week. Her boss would complain later and she’d be ready to give him an earful about how the boys deserved to indulge, especially since they were still paying for everything.

“Try not to spill all over my floor,” she said as she helped him situate the little glasses between his fingers. She knew very little about Cobra, except that he was one of the bigger clones she had seen come through 79’s, that he was a medic, and that he loved to talk.

“Don’t worry ‘bout me,” he laughed, holding up his hands and wriggling his fingers; the glasses clinked against one another, but nothing spilled or slipped out of his grasp. “Steadiest hands in the GAR! You should see me operating in the field!”

“Very impressive,” Odessa agreed, surprised by the way he didn’t shake at all, despite his obvious inebriation.

“Yeah? You should see what else these hands are good for.”

Cobra actually managed a real wink this time, but Odessa shook her head and smiled, unaffected by his charm. Fending off the regulars was easy; they all knew where the boundary lines laid and didn’t make any attempt to push any of the girls outside of their comfort zones. Flirting was just part of the job description, and Odessa knew how the game was played well enough to rake in a generous amount of tips every night. Cobra didn’t know any better, but it was still good fun, even if she didn’t humor him as much as she might have a few months ago.

“Go enjoy,” she said, “and next time ask Rumi for drinks; she is having her eye on you all day.”

“Can you blame her?” Cobra said, his grin only enhanced by the piercings he wore on his lower lip. He tossed his head, the curls of his mohawk flopping into his eyes, before laughing and heading back to his table, where he was greeted by his men with rousing cheers. The clone he had been leaning on, a quiet man with a dour expression, followed after him a little more slowly, the only sober one of the bunch.

I’m late, Odessa thought again as she watched Cobra and his companion get sucked back into the fold of their unit. 

“Magda,” she called out, catching the attention of the older woman working the floor. “I have to take my break—there is a very important call I am to be making. Please, can I go?”

Magda, tall and striking with dark skin and darker eyes, groaned and rubbed her hand up and down her face. She was older than both her and Rumi combined and had worked at 79’s the longest. She had been the one to teach Odessa the art of bartending, how to serve drinks on a tray without the whole thing tipping over, and how to subtly encourage a patron’s philandering without leading him on. She was usually a fun-loving, boisterous woman…but right now she looked as though she wanted to strangle Odessa with her own lekku.

“You’re killin’ me, kiddo,” Magda said. “You see how many clones are in here tonight? I got the whole GAR drinkin’ us out of stock!!”

“I know, and I am so so sorry,” Odessa pressed, “but I really must make this call. It is my father, and if I don’t he will become so worried—I promised I would find time and he hates it when I am unable to keep my promises–-”

“You tell your old man that he better let you live your life,” Magda complained. “You’re an adult, sweetheart, you get to call your own shots. Kark happens and not everything is gonna go accordin’ to plan.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “but it is very different on Ryloth. I am expected to keep my word.”

“You’re not on Ryloth anymore.”

Odessa paused, a small, secret part of her whispering that Magda was right, that she shouldn’t have to give in to her father’s whims now that she was so far removed from his watchful eye. She tried to think of the worst thing that could happen if she were to just…keep working, skip break, skip the call she was already supposed to be making, and continue about her day like she didn’t have anyone but herself to care about. The image of her father’s disappointed face rose to the forefront of her mind, the frown lines bracketing his mouth even more pronounced than they usually were. A shudder worked its way up her spine and Odessa shook her head violently.

“Sorry,” she said, with an apologetic smile, “I will make it up to you, I promise!”

Magda looked at her with something close to concern. Despite the warnings she gave on Odessa’s first day about how she wasn’t going to hold anyone’s hand or come to the rescue for every little mistake made, Magda still had a tendency to mother her from time to time; and not just Odessa, but the other girls as well. She was always listening to Rumi complain about her dating life, giving advice where needed, and she had been quick to call a cab for Kri’tak when she was too drunk to make it home on her own. Maybe she couldn’t help herself…but Odessa always knew she could count on Magda to be the teeniest bit lenient.

“How long have you been here?” Magda asked, checking the time on her wristpiece. 

“I think twelve hours,” Odessa said.

“Ugh. I can’t believe he’s keeping you girls this long…okay. Tell you what. You go take break, make your little call and tell Daddy everything is fine, and then I’m gonna have you clean the counter. After that, you go home and get some rest. How’s that sound?”

“But we are so busy!” Odessa said, immediately thinking she must have done something wrong for her to be sent home earlier than she had been staying in previous days.

“Psshh,” Magda scoffed. “I can handle a whole garrison by myself, you think I need backup? Rumi and I’ll hold it down for the night. That brat owes me a favor anyway. Go call your dad and try to eat somethin’, okay? You’ve been on your feet all day.”

“So have you,” Odessa protested weakly as Magda set her hands on her shoulders and steered her toward the back rooms.

“Not another word,” Magda said.

79’s didn’t have a dedicated employee break room, but what it did have was a tiny, cramped office with a desk, a chair, and a beat up holocom that had certainly seen better years. Their boss used the office for crunching numbers whenever he was around, but the girls almost exclusively used it to take their breaks, eat, or even nap. The holocom itself served few purposes, but it could still make long distance transmissions with minimal hiccups and Odessa and the others were permitted to use it as long as they were off the clock. Since she didn’t own one herself, 79’s was one of the few places where she could make a call without having to wait in line or pay.

A heavy box of new tumblers sat on the only chair in the room, and while she waited for the holocom to boot up Odessa tidied up as much as she could so it didn’t look so much like a chaotic mess. Her father would certainly say something, like he had the last few times. First it was about the noise of laughter and shouting that couldn’t be drowned out even by the closed door (but there was a party that time too, and she couldn't have told the boys to be quiet), then it had been about the form fitting pants and low cut top that was part of her bartender’s ‘uniform’ (she had almost begged Rumi to come show off the same outfit, to prove it was, in fact, a uniform), and then it was about the bar itself, how demeaning and degrading it was of her to work in such an environment, where she would be exploited for her pretty looks and ‘exotic’ accent, no doubt. She could almost hear her father’s voice in her head and replay word for word the way he had lectured her each time, as though it was within her power to change things.

Too late, Odessa realized she was shaking. She looked down at her hands, watching the way her fingers trembled as she flexed them. Nothing like Cobra’s, firm and still even with five strong drinks already buzzing through his veins. She bet he was a fantastic field surgeon and all the men in his squad seemed to love him immensely, if the way they had kept hugging on him throughout the night had been any indication.

She wished she had some of that steadfastness now.

The holocom beeped to life, the screen lighting up with its usual dingy blue tint that washed out the entire room. Odessa exhaled forcefully and quickly started up the transmitter, inputting the code her father had sent her to establish the link to Ryloth. 

Just be cordial, she coached herself as she sat down in the chair, readjusting her lekku behind her back, then thinking better of it and pulling them over her shoulders to obscure the blouse she was wearing. The terminal chirped as it made its connection. Odessa swallowed and nervously shifted, hoping that the scanner on her end was also working, though she’d have no way of telling until—

“Odessa?” 

The sudden, harsh sound of her father’s voice made her flinch. 

“Can you see me? Is it working?”

A low hum emanated from the transmitter as it pieced together an image from the data gathered by its CPU; slowly but surely, a miniature copy of her father flickered into view, the reception making him appear a little wavy and slightly out of focus. Though less than half a meter tall, he managed to appear larger than life with his arms crossed over his chest and his long lekku draped over his shoulders. His presence filled the room, until Odessa felt like she was shrinking in on herself to escape his scrutiny. Though the hologram washed out the color of his skin and eyes, she could still feel the heat of his stare and knew that he was silently appraising her.

“Kora,” Odessa said in Ryl, smiling despite her apprehensions. “It’s so good to see you. I’m sorry I was—”

“Late,” he interrupted. “I expected you hours ago. You’re fortunate I was still around to take the call.”

Her smile faltered and she felt a sensation inside of her like the weight of a stone dropping into the pit of her stomach. Trust her father to immediately find something to criticize, despite the fact that it had been two months since they had last spoken.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized again. “We’ve been so busy today, I didn’t think I’d find time. How have you been? I-I miss you. And Firith. Is he around?”

“Your brother is out scouting,” Silais said, inclining his head toward her. “I don’t know when he’s expected back; we’ve been maintaining comm silence for the past few weeks.”

“Oh…is everything alright?”

“There is a war going on.”

She flinched again without meaning to, taking hold of the ends of her lekku and pretending to play with them to quell her nervousness.

He can see you, a little voice said in the back of her mind. You can’t hide from him. He knows you’re on edge.

“I know,” she said, looking down in her lap. “You don’t have to treat me like I’m a child who doesn’t know anything.”

“You’re my child,” her father said with a little huff, “and I shouldn’t have to remind you. You know our transmissions can be tracked by the Separatists. I risk it every time we call.”

“I don’t want to argue,” Odessa said, even as guilt struck at her heart. “Can we just…have a nice conversation? For once? I want to know how you’re doing.”

Silais stared at her for a moment before sighing and dropping one hand to his hip. The other went to the back of his head, scratching at the bulbous junction of his lekku. She knew there was a lot on his shoulders—the worry he carried for her and her brother, the pressure coming down on him from Syndulla, and the stress that came from the war itself and not knowing if their people were going to be able to arm themselves well enough to fight back. Odessa knew it was her duty, as his daughter, to try and keep the peace between them as much as possible. He didn’t need any additional worries…but it wasn’t her fault that he talked to her the way he did.

“I’ve been doing about as well as can be expected, given the circumstances,” Silais eventually said. “There’s not enough to go around and for every supply drop that manages to make it past the Separatist blockade, there’s three more that fail. You remember how things were.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Odessa asked, her heart breaking thinking about her father and brother going without food or sleep. “I can try and pick up more shifts so I can send you credits for—”

“No,” he said sternly, holding up a hand to halt her in the middle of her sentence, “I sent you to Coruscant so you wouldn’t be affected by this. We’ll manage, like we always have.”

“I’d rather be back on Ryloth, with you, than here by myself,” Odessa admitted sullenly, biting her lower lip. “I wish you hadn’t sent me away.”

She almost hadn’t forgiven him for doing so. Barely a month after the violent passing of her mother, she had awoken one morning to find a bag packed and a transport waiting to take her off-world. If it hadn’t been for Firith begging her to go, for her own sake and for his, she would have fought for blood to stay. A part of her had even dared to hope that Silais would finally see reason and permit her to finally learn how to shoot, how to fight and scout so that she’d be of some use to the Rebellion…but she had been naive to think so. If anything, her mother’s death had only hardened his resolve. 

She could still remember how he had dragged her from their home, kicking and screaming, and forced her aboard the ship. He had stood over her and told her it was for her own good, that he wouldn’t lose her too, and that had been the end of it. She couldn’t think of the way Ryloth had looked in the viewport, getting smaller and smaller until they made the jump to hyperspace, without crying. Sometimes she still woke up at night, trembling and frightened, her face soaked with tears. Coruscant was nothing like Ryloth…and she missed home so dearly.

“I did what I had to do,” Silais said with a weary sigh. “I wish I could make you understand how difficult that choice was for me.”

Odessa wanted to snap back that it hadn’t seemed all that hard for him when he had tossed her into one of the transport’s seats and forcibly buckled her in, but thought better of it. She didn’t want to argue. She wanted to hear about his day and listen to him talk and pretend that he wasn’t thousands of lightyears away. She wanted to tell him about her work and studies and wanted him to tell her that she was doing a good job and that he was proud of her. She wished Firith was there to mediate; he was good at that sort of thing, always able to tell when tensions were running too high and butting in with a joke or a story. Odessa missed him and the way he’d hug her so tight, lifting her off the ground every time. 

“Maybe one day I will,” she said, trying not to make a face about it. “In the meantime you will be happy to hear that I’ve applied for the citizenship test. It’s still months away but I’ve gathered all the material and have been studying.”

“That’s good,” Silais said, and he did in fact look pleased with that news; his lekku twitched in a way that denoted relief, and the creases carved into his forehead from years spent worrying about everything he couldn't control smoothed out. “It’ll afford you better opportunities in the long run. Hopefully you won’t be forced to work at that bar for much longer.”

“I like the bar, actually,” Odessa said with a small smile that meant more to herself than anything else. “I like meeting new people and everyone’s been really nice. It’s a lot easier than I thought it’d be; the hardest part was memorizing the mixed drinks.”

“It’s beneath you,” Silais said with a frown. “A job like that only plays into the stereotypes about our people. Besides…I don’t like you hanging all those men.”

“Kora…they’re mostly clones, I told you. They’re just looking to drink, flirt, and maybe forget about the war for a little bit. They’re perfectly harmless.”

“Yes, harmless—until you wind up pregnant and alone.”

“Kora!”

Silais shrugged. It wasn't that he didn't like clones, or didn't trust them—the opposite, really. Like most Twi'lek he respected the clone army and the sacrifices they made, and had even gone so far as to suggest to Cham Syndulla that they be granted some sort of status on Ryloth once the war ended…but all that altruism bled out of him where his daughter was concerned.

"I'm not saying you'd fall for their charm," Silais said dryly, "but I'm sure others have. I just worry about you, that's all. You're a young woman, alone on a strange planet–"

"And whose fault is that?!"

"–living by yourself and working the kind of job that gets you into…situations. I really wish you'd try and find a roommate or–"

"That's not how the system works. I told you a hundred times: the housing allowance for individuals is based on marital status."

"Hm. Maybe I should have married you off before sending you away."

Odessa rolled her eyes, annoyed at the implication that he could just do as he pleased and she'd go along with it. Silais probably thought he was joking…but as usual, all his 'jokes' fell flat. Maybe he felt like he was trying to lighten the mood…but even his softest moments were ruined by his incessant need to micromanage. Sometimes she wondered if he had really meant to send her all the way across the galaxy, if only because it put her so far away from his ability to oversee every detail of her day-to-day life.

It was a mistake to call, she thought to herself as she pulled a container of dried jogan fruit from her backpack. Encouraging her father's lame attempts at humor was beyond her capabilities at the moment; her skin prickled every time he made a backhanded comment about the clones, too. None of the ones she had met had ever once made her feel like she wouldn't be safe in a room with them. She wasn't so air-headed to believe that they were all noble or anything like that…but she felt like she was a pretty good judge of character.

Besides…it wasn't like she had ever taken one of them back to her apartment.

Except Ghoul, the voice in her head reminded her. Almost Ghoul.

"Is there anything you can share that I can relay to our people at the refugee center?" Odessa asked, shoving that errant thought to the back of her mind and popping a piece of fruit into her mouth. "They're always asking me if I have any information from back home; it'd be nice to be able to tell them something, for a change."

Silais curled his finger against his lips and thought for a moment. 

"Syndulla is hopeful for the future," he said diplomatically. "Ultimately he believes we will be able to take back control of our homeland, and that everyone who has been displaced will be able to return to Ryloth."

"That's really vague," Odessa complained. "You can't say more? Please, Kora?"

"You're shameless," he groaned. "Fine. We recently came into possession of intel that will, in time, turn the tide of the war. Do not ask me for anything else. I've already said enough."

It still wasn't much, but Odessa was satisfied, knowing full well that any word was better than nothing. So many Twi'leks had been forced to flee Ryloth, and not all of them came through Coruscant; those who had looked to her to keep them updated on reports from home, only because of her father's position within the Rebellion. She had made no secret of who she was, feeling it was the very least Silais owed her for what he had done.

"They'll be so happy to hear that," she said. "No matter how long it takes, just to have hope is enough to keep them going."

"It's all we have," Silais said, softening. "Your…mother used to say that hope was the lifeblood of rebellions."

Odessa froze. Her father never brought up the subject of her mother, not on his own, not without heavy prompting. The wound her death had left on him ran deep, changing him from the inside out until he hardly resembled the kind and patient man she remembered from her childhood. For him to even mention her now…it brought an ache to Odessa's heart that stabbed like a knife, sharp and twisting until she felt like she couldn't breathe.

"She would know what to say," Odessa said, her voice warped with the effort it took not to cry.

Silais smiled and it was a small, pained smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"She always did."

"Odie!!"

The door to the office bounced open with the force of Rumi throwing her entire body against it, bursting into the room with an exuberant smile and no regard at all for privacy. Odessa scrambled to wipe her eyes and spun around in her seat, mildly horrified that her private conversation had been disturbed so violently.

"I am having a call, Rumi," Odessa hissed, but her coworker just laughed and shook her head so that her tendrils fanned out in every direction.

"Yeah, well your boyfriend just walked through the door and immediately demanded to know where you were, so I had to come tell you."

"'Boyfriend'?" Silais repeated behind Odessa, his tone back to its usual sharpness.

"I don't have a boyfriend," she said rapidly over her shoulder. The ends of her lekku curled in obvious happiness though, and she heard her father gasp in horror.

"He is not my boyfriend," she said to Rumi, glaring as the Mikkian giggled behind her hand. "Be minding your own business!"

"He took you out last time he was here," Rumi said, a mischievous grin on her face. "And he doesn't like anyone else, except you. I think it's cute!"

"Who is this man?" Silais demanded to know. "Where did he take you? Is he a clone?"

"Kora! I don't have a boyfriend, Ghoul's just a friend!"

"His name is Ghoul?"

"Anyway, he's probably waiting for you to serve him," Rumi kept on while Odessa just dropped her face into her hands with a groan. "He'll die of thirst if you don't get out there. Come on girl, break time's over!"

“Odessa,” Silais snapped the second Rumi closed the door behind her again, “is what she said true? Are you seeing someone? A clone?”

“She’s exaggerating,” Odessa said, stuffing her snacks back into her bag and scrambling to fix her uniform. “He is only a friend.”

No he’s not, her inner voice whispered.

“Why am I just now hearing about this?”

“Ugh, because it’s my life! I’m allowed to have friends and go places after work!”

Silais threw his hands up in the air and turned in a tight, frustrated circle, staring at her in disbelief as she shook all the contents in her bag to settle them before zipping it back up. Odessa’s heart throbbed in her throat—she couldn’t swallow around it, couldn’t breathe past it. Ghoul was there, and he had asked for her specifically. It wasn’t the first time a regular had requested her attention before, but it was…it was different this time. She had to get back out there, even if his order was the last thing she did before clocking out; no one else was gonna know what he liked without asking.

“I didn’t send you to Coruscant for you to traipse around the city with every soldier who tries to fill your head with their tales of glory,” Silais scolded her. Odessa wasn’t looking at him, but he sounded angry—angry enough that some petty part of her felt glad about it, like it served him right. 

“Then you shouldn’t have sent me here at all,” Odessa said, checking her reflection in the tiny mirror by the door. “I’ve been alone this whole time and I’m tired of it. I’m not going to isolate myself just to make you feel better for abandoning me.”

“I didn’t abandon you,” Silais whispered loudly. “How can you say that? I sent you away to protect you!”

“You weren’t ‘protecting’ me. You were a coward and you didn’t want me to end up like Mother!”

“Odessa, watch your tongue, before–”

“Which never would have happened if you had taught her how to shoot.”

As soon as the words left her mouth she wished she could take them back. The sharp inhale she heard her father take felt like it sucked all the air out of the room; the humming of the holocom transmitter and the muffled laughter from the bar were the only sounds between them. She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t bring herself to see the expression on his face—the one thing she knew she shouldn’t bring up, the one thing she knew ate at Silais every waking moment of his life…and she had weaponized it.

It had been a mistake to call. She should have left it for another time when she could make use of the free holocoms offered by some of the public service centers. It would have meant less privacy but she would have been far enough away from the bar that there wouldn’t have been any real distractions. Maybe they could have had a nice conversation—maybe Firith would have been back from his scouting mission, and he would have never let things get so…so bad. 

It’s too late, she thought to herself. Nothing can be done about it.

“I have to go back to work,” Odessa said softly. She tried not to think about how pathetic and small her voice sounded. “Give Firith my love. I’ll talk to you later.”

She didn’t hear anything for a moment…then came the sound of the call disconnecting. Somehow the silence Silais left behind was even louder. 

Odessa breathed a sigh of…something. Not relief. There was no solace to be found where her father was concerned, not when…not when their calls ended like that. The last time they had spoken had almost ended similarly, with Odessa being the one to cut the transmission because of the overbearing way he had criticized her choice to work at 79’s (for the hundredth time, it felt like), as opposed to something more ‘reputable’. No matter how many times she tried to tell him that her position at the refugee center was voluntary, it didn’t seem to get through his thick skull. Firith had been there that time and had managed to step in to keep them from going at each other’s throats, but there was only so much he could do.

Just forget about it, she told herself. Go back to work. Finish your shift. Go see Ghoul.

Ghoul.

Just the thought of him was enough to relax some of the tension that had built into her shoulders and ease the headache lancing through her lekku. It had only been fifteen rotations since he had taken her to the shooting range and showed her how to properly fire a blaster. Fifteen rotations since he had escorted her back to her apartment. Fifteen long rotations since she kissed him goodnight and watched him walk away with a giddiness in her chest that hadn’t ever abated. She wished she had thought to ask him for his commlink info before letting him leave; he didn’t seem like the kind of man to send spontaneous messages in the late hours of the night or anything, but Odessa would have liked the ability to just…tell him again how much she had enjoyed being taken out and taught a skill that, while no means perfect, was still more than her own father had done for her.

And…she would have liked to tell him how much she wanted to kiss him again, and more.

Odessa groaned and patted her cheeks, trying to ward off the immediate flush that colored her skin a slightly darker shade of bluish-green. She couldn’t afford to stand around wondering, She wanted to put the disaster of a call with her father behind her. She wanted to see Ghoul again and maybe talk to him before Magda dragged her out of 79’s by her lekku. Plus, it was still early enough in the day that she’d have plenty of time to stop by the refugee center to relay her father’s information to her people. Just the thought of their relieved faces and excited whispers was enough to send adrenaline racing through her veins.

Determined to end her day on a good note, no matter what, Odessa quickly threw her backpack into its corner and hurried back out to the bar, chewing on her lower lip as she scanned the floor—now packed to the brim with patrons—for her favorite clone. Thankfully, Ghoul wasn’t a difficult man to lose in a crowd. In fact, if she didn’t know any better she would have thought he had been waiting to catch her eye, for how quickly he seemed to look up and meet her gaze. He sat at a table in the corner, where he seemed to prefer to take his drinks, and was joined once again by Commander Wolffe. Odessa felt her heart somersault as Ghoul lifted a hand, giving a little half-wave in acknowledgement of seeing her. She smiled brightly, waving back before turning to grab a glass from the clean rack and the half full bottle of Catsblood from its shelf. 

I hope he’s not upset with me, she thought to herself as she carefully overpoured by just a smidge. 

It wasn’t that she actually thought he was, but…the last thing she had done was kiss him and she still didn’t know how he had felt about it. He hadn’t really kissed her back or anything, or made any sort of move or noise to indicate he had enjoyed it…but neither had he shoved her away or made a face or…anything, really. It had been an odd kiss compared to the ones she’d given and received before…but out of all of them she thought she had enjoyed it the most, for how sweetly deserved it had felt to give. Odessa knew if she wanted to assuage any of her fears then she really should have asked for his…oh, but she could ask for it now! 

The idea struck her like a lightning bolt, rendering her lekku stiff with excitement. She almost spun in place before putting the bottle of liquor back on the shelf, and then almost forgot to take the glass with her as she skirted her way through the employee gate and out onto the floor, dodging and weaving her way between clones and civilians alike before finally, finally making it over to where Ghoul sat with his brother.

He watched her approach, staring in that unblinking way of his that sometimes set her on edge. It almost reminded her of the way her father would stare at her when he was trying to subtly inform her that he was displeased, but with Ghoul she only felt like he was…studying her. Like he couldn’t quite put his finger on something that was bothering him. Odessa found she didn’t mind being the subject of his scrutiny, though she wondered what was going on inside his head when he looked at her. Did he…think she was pretty? Was he still thinking about the kiss she had given him too? Was he trying to figure out how to ask her about it? She wished he would, if only because not knowing how he felt about it was eating a hole inside of her.

“It is so good to be seeing you again,” Odessa said warmly as she reached their tableside. She deposited Ghoul’s drink in front of him and nodded politely at Commander Wolffe, who raised his own drink to her in greeting. “Rumi said you had not ordered yet—I hope I did not keep you waiting for very long.”

Ghoul shook his head and curled his hands around his glass, staring down into the drink. He didn’t look any different than he usually did, no new scars or anything obvious; she had to wonder what he had been up to for the past fifteen rotations, if he had been allowed to stay on leave for so long or if there had been another mission in the interim. To her eyes he looked good, well-rested and a little relaxed in a way that made her suspect he hadn’t been forced back on deployment; she could only tell because whenever he wasn’t scowling the little furrow between his brows disappeared, smoothing out his forehead and making him look slightly more approachable.

“Wasn’t long,” Ghoul said, the sound of his raspy voice, which she had come to enjoy the sound of, sending a shiver creeping through her. “Besides, you know what I like.”

“Anyone would know what you like, if you bothered to tell them,” Wolffe spoke up. He kept looking between them curiously, his cybernetic eye in stark contrast with the other, to the point where it seemed there was something on the tip of his tongue that he wanted to say but was refraining from doing so.

Ghoul shrugged and took a sip of his drink.

“The other one’s annoying,” he said sullenly. “Talks too much. Odessa already knows my order.”

“Careful there,” Wolffe said with a smirk, “you’re starting to sound like a regular.”

Odessa tried to keep herself from giggling, but only with monumental effort that didn’t extend to the very tips of her lekku, which convulsed prettily with how warm it made her feel to hear that Ghoul would rather wait to be served by her than bother talking to anyone else. How and when his rudeness had become an endearing trait was a mystery, but she didn’t care; it was nice to know that he felt comfortable enough to ask for her by name.

“Is there anything else I can get for you?” she asked, addressing Ghoul specifically. “My shift is almost over but if I am not minding staying over just a little bit if you are needing something else.”

“You’re leaving?” Ghoul asked, looking up at her with that wrinkle back between his brows again. “I thought…don’t your shifts normally…uh, last longer?”

“Normally, yes,” Odessa said, “but I have been working since the morning—since it is being so busy lately and there are only so few of us, we have all been scheduled longer hours.”

“Oh…,” Ghoul said, unable to hide the disappointment in his tone. “That’s…too bad.”

“He was looking forward to seeing you,” Wolffe said. Ghoul’s head shot up and Odessa watched him focus a glare so powerful on his brother that she wasn’t sure she’d survive being on the receiving end.

“Shut. Up,” Ghoul hissed, for all the good it did. For as long as she had known Wolffe, she had never known the commander to back down from anyone.

“It was his idea to come down here,” he forged ahead, meeting Ghoul’s glare with a smug look. “He practically dragged me.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“What? I’m right, aren’t I?”

Odessa covered her mouth with her hand to stop the laughter from bubbling forth. The way they acted with each other reminded her so much of herself and Firith, in a good way; the love between them was apparent, and Ghoul’s threat carried no weight behind it. It made her happy to know that he had someone else looking out for him, even if that someone was Commander Wolffe; he was still scary at times, very intimidating before he had his first drink, but even her perception of him had changed since Ghoul started showing up. Wolffe couldn’t possibly maintain his perfect image around his brother, not all the time.

“Well I am glad you came by,” Odessa said before Ghoul could crawl over the table and strangle Wolffe. “I…wanted to thank you again, for the lesson. It was very much fun.”

“Lesson?” Wolffe asked, his eyebrows arching in surprise. “What kind of lesson?”

“It’s nothing,” Ghoul said sharply. “Mind your own damn business.”

“He took me to a shooting range,” Odessa said, happily ignoring Ghoul’s warning signs. “I do not know my way around a blaster, but he showed me how to handle one safely—I even hit the target, though it took me many times. He is very patient.”

“That…doesn’t sound like him at all,” Wolffe laughed. “You sure you got the right guy? We all look alike, y’know.”

“I am positive,” Odessa said, smiling. “Ghoul is one of a kind. I could not be mistaking him for anyone else.”

Wolffe snorted into his drink and Ghoul jerked; a split second later Wolffe yelped, reaching beneath the table to grab at his leg, which Odessa realized Ghoul must have kicked. She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, trying not to lose her composure directly in front of them, but this time her efforts failed and she let out a peal of sharp laughter that caught the attention of at least a few more clones. More importantly, it caught Ghoul’s attention. The very tops of his cheeks flushed, the color spreading quickly to his ears before he looked back down at the table.

“Fair enough,” Wolffe said, rubbing his shin. “Ghoul’s one of the best marksmen I’ve ever seen; you couldn’t learn from better.”

“I believe it. Uhm…I am hoping though…”

“Yeah?” Ghoul asked, looking back up, his expression just a little expectant, if she was not mistaken. She didn’t want to be. She wanted to be right, that she was able to read his face just a little better after the time they had spent together. It made her feel like…like that was something she had that very few others did, and that Ghoul allowed it because…because she had earned it.

“I am thinking it would be nice if…if I could be having your comm details,” Odessa said, a little breathlessly. She had to get the words out before she forgot, before she lost her nerve. She still didn’t know if Ghoul had enjoyed the kiss, but if he had come back, and if he had asked for her, then he couldn’t possibly be upset about it, right?

“My…my what?” Ghoul asked.

“Your commlink,” Wolffe said. “You know, the thing you used to wake me up before the sun had risen? Give her your transmission codes.”

Ghoul sat frozen in place, his eyes wide. Odessa watched him blink a couple times before he seemed to shake himself out of his daze long enough to reach for a pouch of his belt. She immediately fumbled for her own commlink, practically dropping it the moment she yanked it out of her back pocket. It was old and beat up, nothing like the sleek, newer models issued by the GAR, but Ghoul held his out for the sync and within just a few seconds she had managed to add him into her database of contacts. Her thumbs felt numb as she typed in the characters for his name—on the silliest whim imaginable, she added an extra symbol to mark him as a favorite.

“Thank you,” she said shyly, pulling one of her lekku over her shoulder and fidgeting with the end. “It will not be trouble if I am messaging you sometimes?”

“I…I don’t think so,” Ghoul said, all the bite gone from his voice as he stared down at his commlink. “I uh, get busy sometimes, though. I…I don’t—”

“That is okay,” Odessa hurried to say. “I just do not want to be a bother. But I like talking to you. It seems a shame I only get to do so when you come in for a drink; now there is no pressure!”

“You’re…not a bother,” Ghoul said, looking uncomfortable.

Her heart swelled and she could scarcely contain her joy, knowing he felt that way about her. It was almost as good as confirmation, in her mind.

“As painfully amusing as this is to watch…Odie, we’re not holding you up, are we?” Wolffe interrupted. 

Oh, yeah.

She looked back at the bar and winced when she caught sight of Magda staring at her, tapping her wrist to simulate the time. She still needed to wipe down the bartop, as promised. Normally it didn’t take much to force her out the door, but today she felt like dragging her feet or coming up with some kind of excuse so she could stay. 

The refugee center, she forcibly reminded herself. You have to tell them the good news.

“You will not leave again without telling me?” she asked Ghoul. He appeared surprised for a moment, then glanced at Wolffe, who shrugged.

“The missions I’m sent on are usually classified,” he said with a frown. “I can’t just tell you where I’m going.”

“Not where,” Odessa said. “Just…when you are leaving. I would just…like to know.”

“Why?”

This time it was Wolffe who kicked Ghoul under the table, except he didn’t try to make a secret out of the fact that he had done so.

“He’ll let you know,” Wolffe said as Ghoul cursed his name. “I’ll make sure to remind him when he gets his orders. Not everything he does requires absolute secrecy. He was on Ryloth for his last assignment.”

“Wolffe!”

“You were?” Odessa gasped. “You should have said so! Is…was it a secret mission? Were you successful? Did you get to meet with Cham Syndulla and the other leaders of the rebellion?”

In her excitement she didn’t really register the way Ghoul glared at Wolffe, or the way that he sighed before running his hand over the top of his head. What she did notice was the way his buzzcut looked fresh, with his hair shorn so close to his head she wondered what it felt like to touch.

“It…was classified,” Ghoul grumbled. “The news will pick it up soon though; they love ruining secrets.”

“It’s for morale’s sake,” Wolffe reminded him. “Sometimes it can be to the advantage to show your hand.”

“It’s premature,” Ghoul snarled. “All that hard work, and for what?”

“Knock it off. You knew this was gonna happen.”

“Excuse me,” Odessa said, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet, “but is there…is there any way you could be telling me more? About your mission? Or Ryloth? Or anything? I am—it is only that I am going to the refugee center to drop off some documents for some of the new arrivals, and my people are eager for news from home as well. I would love so much to be able to offer them something to alleviate their fears.”

Ghoul seemed to be avoiding her gaze and she knew she should back off, that she didn’t understand the complexity of military operations and that maybe what she was asking was more than he was willing to give…but Odessa had to try. It was possible Ghoul had been part of the intel recovery that her father had mentioned—if that was the case, then who better to ply details out of than the very clone who had probably had a hand in securing the information?

“I…don’t know,” Ghoul said, rubbing the back of his neck now. “If someone heard you repeating details only I would know….”

“Then you should come with me!” Odessa said, immediately angling for another approach. “You could tell them yourself, be answering questions, and maybe getting to meet people whose lives you have helped save! What is that it is called, a winning scenario?”

“A win-win,” Wolffe corrected gently. “And that sounds like a good idea. Ghoul, you could use a pick-me-up. Why don’t you go with her?”

“We just got here,” Ghoul grumbled. 

“Not now,” Odessa said. “Tomorrow? I will be off in the morning and can be meeting you at the center! I will introduce you to everyone!”

“Uh….”

“Sounds like a plan,” Wolffe said, grinning. “I’ll make sure he remembers. Odie, you better get out of here. I think your coworker is having second thoughts about letting you leave.”

Odessa looked over her shoulder a second time and saw Magda waving a cleaning cloth wildly above her head, gesturing at the dirty counters. 

“Yes, sorry,” she said with a sigh. “Thank you so much, this will mean everything to my people. You will love to meet them, I am sure. And they will love to meet you too! I will comm you with the address! Please stay for as long as you want, and enjoy the drinks—Ma'allesh!”

Her steps felt so much lighter as she turned away from them, like she could run laps around the entire floor and work another whole twelve hour shift. How fortuitous, that Ghoul’s last deployment should have taken him to her homeplanet! She tried not to think about how he hadn’t mentioned it earlier, the last time they had seen each other, perhaps…but it didn’t matter now. He had agreed to visit the refugee center and she was certain that whatever tidbits he could reveal would be far more comforting than anything her father could have come up with. She didn’t even feel affected by the guilt that usually lingered within her chest after an unfortunate call from home.

Odessa hurried back to the counter and shrieked with a bit of laughter as Magda whipped her behind with the towel, taking it from her and hurriedly starting at the far end of the bartop, wiping aggressively as patrons dutifully lifted their drinks out of her way.

Tomorrow…tomorrow would be a better day. She was sure of it.

~~~

Two weeks of leave should have meant two weeks spent relaxing—sleeping in, catching up with Fox and Wolffe, replacing his old gear and testing the replacements, or even exploring Coruscant. Any of those options would have been better than what Ghoul was actually made to do, which was write up what felt like a hundred reports, all saying the same thing in different ways, to be passed along the chain of command, up to people he had never heard of, let alone met.

They wouldn't allow him a face-to-face meeting; he had exhausted any and all goodwill he might've once had among the upper echelon of the GAR.

You can't be trusted to not cause a scene, someone had said to him once before, some nameless face he hadn't bothered to pay any attention to. It was a fair assessment—Ghoul had no qualms about opening his mouth and telling the Admirals they were full of kark and their madcap schemes benefited no one outside of lining their own pockets with the credits they saved by being cheap. He'd look a Senator in the eye and tell them to go jump out a window if given the chance.

So, he shut up and spent two weeks writing multiple reports and resisting the urge to defect off to some unnamed planet past the Outer Rim. Two weeks of downtime, absolutely wasted, and all because a handful of idiots couldn’t be bothered to make time to be in the same room together in order to receive a debriefing. There were other things he could have been doing with his time but of all the things he could think of, Ghoul kept coming back to the one person who had managed to capture his attention so thoroughly that he had a hard time considering his other options.

More to the point, Odessa had kissed him…and he still couldn't figure out why.

She had kissed him, stood up on her toes and touched his face with a soft little hand that hadn’t made him flinch, and she had pressed her lips to his ruined face and kissed him like she didn’t mind the prosthetics, didn’t mind the scars—she had kissed him like he was whole and not some broken, patchwork mess of a man made up of spare parts, and he hadn’t known what to do except stand there and take it because…because it must’ve been a mistake…right? Just a…just a cruel joke.

No one could look at him and think he was someone worth kissing.

But…Odessa hadn’t laughed or made fun of him. The kiss itself hadn’t even lasted all that long before she had pulled away to bid him goodnight, but the brief contact had been enough to fill him with warmth all the way down to his toes. He remembered making it down the three flights of stairs and then sitting down on the bottom step because walking had been an impossibility with his head swimming like he had just been run over by a BARC speeder. For ten minutes he had sat there, staring at his boots and wondering if he should go back up and knock on her door so he could ask her what the hell she had meant by that…but in the end he had just returned to the barracks.

Ghoul had snuck off to the showers again, but that time, instead of running the cold water in an attempt to stave off the lust curling shamefully in his gut, he had edged himself painfully under a stream of the hottest water he could stand, imagining Odessa’s hand on his cheek, the tips of her fingers like bright points of fire against his skin, and he imagined the way she might have touched him in another life where he wasn’t damaged and could give her the kinds of things he guessed a man might give a woman.

No one had ever touched him like that. 

He had never been kissed before, by anyone.

Before Toydaria…like most of his brothers Ghoul had dreamt about what a normal life would be like, once the war ended, if it ever ended. He had allowed himself the luxury of a dream, just a small one, of someday being able to make his own choices in life, to live out the rest of his days as he saw fit. Maybe those daydreams had included someone else, someone who made him smile, who knew what love was and was only too happy to share it with him. He had been filled with the sort of romantic kark that a lot of clones experienced before their first battle—and like most of them, he had lost any hope of ever experiencing ‘normal’ again.

The war was all there was. 

All he had was himself to rely on. 

Before Odessa it had been easy to focus on himself and his purpose…but now he was left with an ache like an old wound inside of him and the ghostly sensation of hands on his face when he thought he was alone. Ghoul hadn’t told anyone else about the kiss—he knew Wolffe wouldn’t believe him and that Fox would only demand details; besides, he wasn’t sure he wanted to share with his brothers the memory of how it had felt…he held onto it, turning it over and over in his mind until he had analyzed every detail from every angle. It felt like a puzzle he had to solve, like he’d never be satisfied until he could understand why she had kissed him.

But for the life of him…he just couldn't figure it out.

And somehow it had led him back to 79’s, Wolffe at his side for support and the idea running around his head that if he saw her again, then maybe he’d find the courage to take her aside and ask her about it. Odessa didn’t seem like the kind of person who would lie to his face; he was confident he’d be able to tell even if she tried. Her expressions were so open and unguarded, made worse by the shape of her eyes. He had tried to compare the color of them to different skies he had seen on the multiple planets he had been to, but the memory of each one seemed more faded then the last until he became convinced that Odessa just had…the prettiest eyes he had ever seen.

He had been stricken when she had looked at him from across the bar, the first time he had seen her in two weeks since he had taken her to the firing range (two weeks since she kissed him, her lips soft and warm and he had only been able to feel so much with the scarring around his upper lip but he knew he was right), and her smile made him feel like a detonator had gone off inside of him.

Wolffe suspected something was up—he had to because there had never been a point where Ghoul had suggested they go to 79’s on his own; usually he was the one forced to tag along after his brothers, who both acted like there wasn’t any other bar on all of Coruscant. But if he thought something was up, Wolffe didn’t say anything about it and just joined up outside the base, where they walked in relative silence. He was dependable that way, always able to tell when Ghoul wanted to be alone with his thoughts and leaving him to them; the annoying little brother thing was partially an act, one that he put on hold…but only for so long.

Ghoul almost wished he had come alone after all. His mouth had dried up moreso than usual when he saw Odessa and by the time she made it over to their table he could tell that he should’ve just ignored the little voice inside his head that had convinced him it’d be no trouble to just ask her about the kiss. His courage failed him the moment he saw her.

She was just…she was pretty. She was pretty and kind and all the things that he had never been and never could be, and the thought of what she might say if he asked her about the kiss terrified him. It was better not knowing than hearing her admit that she had only done so because she'll pitied him…because it was so obvious he wasn’t getting any from anywhere else, so before he died he may as well know what it was like to kiss someone. A pity-kiss would be the worst-case scenario. He wouldn’t recover from that.

He didn’t want to know how repulsive she actually thought he was, either. Odessa only knew about his facial prosthetics; he was certain that if she could see his arm, or his fingers, she’d regret touching him to begin with. Some days he felt more machine than man…and that was okay for him to think…but if Odessa saw him and thought the same thing he knew he’d just end up ejecting himself out of an airlock. He hated the hold she seemed to have over him. It was the lack of control that had him so tense and on edge all the time. He wanted to hate her for it…but he couldn’t. 

He just couldn’t.

And now he had her commlink number, saved to his device under ‘Odie’ because Wolffe had snatched it from him the moment she had walked away from their table and saved it, starred it, added it to his list of important contacts—a list that, so far, had only ever included Wolffe and Fox—and then tossed the commlink back at him with such force he had nearly missed the catch.

“You’re an idiot if you let her get away,” Wolffe said, as serious as Ghoul had ever seen him. 

“She’s not into me,” he retorted.

“Your eyes malfunctioning?” Wolffe laughed. “You’d have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to think that. She just asked you for your comm-code. She was blushing. Can you even read lekku?”

“No,” Ghoul said, feeling every bit the idiot Wolffe said he was, “why would I?”

“Because if you did, you’d be able to tell how happy she was to see you. How were you on Ryloth for two whole months and managed not to pick up a bit of the language?”

“I didn’t try.”

“You should. You might learn something. I bet Odie would appreciate the gesture, too.”

“What does it matter?" Ghoul asked. “It’s not like this is going anywhere. I just took her to the firing range. You’re acting like it was a date.”

“Why did you take her?” 

“...because she doesn’t know how to shoot."

“That can’t be it,” Wolffe said, leaning against the edge of the table. “You’re telling me you put a blaster in her hands and made her practice just because she didn’t know how? Come on."

He wanted to insist that it was the only reason, but Wolffe would see right through him. They knew each other too well for a lie to fly under the radar like that, so Ghoul sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"She's defenseless," he admitted. "She walks everywhere alone, down to that club and who knows where else, but she doesn't even carry a taser. Coruscant's only safe on the surface levels—down below you know what happens. She could be…trafficked or killed, or…worse."

"You're…worried about her," Wolffe said, surprised. "Huh. I…didn't think you had it in you."

"I'm not a monster," Ghoul mumbled. "She deserves to feel safe, that's all."

"...you know she's an immigrant, right? Legally she can't apply for a blaster license."

Ghoul avoided Wolffe's questioning gaze, instead choosing to take a long sip of his Catsblood, until he felt his eyes begin to water from the burn he felt at the back of his throat.

"Wait," Wolffe said, squinting at him with a suspicious look, "you're not…you're not planning to buy one for her, are you?"

Ghoul shrugged.

"How's anyone gonna know unless she has to use it?" he said.

"Ghoul, if you're found out that's a felony at best. You'll be lucky if all they do is slap you in stasis cuffs."

"It's a risk I'm willing to take."

Wolffe sat back, blinking like something was caught in his eyes. Ghoul had never seen his brother rendered so speechless before, but it was starting to get on his nerves. Why did everyone think he was incapable of common decency? Just because he didn't often show it didn't mean he was completely heartless.

"You must really like her," Wolffe said finally, after taking a moment to gather up his composure. "You've always been a maverick, but not like this. Not for a civvie."

Ghoul looked over at the bar where Odessa had finally finished wiping down the counters. She had her backpack slung over her shoulder and looked like she was thanking the older woman who had shouted at them to find a seat the moment they had walked through the door. He guessed it must have been a trick of the light or something, but he thought he caught her glancing over at them. She looked…happy.

"Maybe," he acquiesced, feeling the fight leave his bones when Odessa smiled at something her coworker said. She had a dimple in her left cheek.

"Kark," Wolffe cursed, finishing off his drink in one big gulp. "Never thought I'd see the day."

"Yeah, well…don't get your hopes up," Ghoul sneered. "Like I said, it's not going anywhere."

"How come?"

"...are you serious?"

Ghoul gestured angrily at his face, the ugly prosthetic that made up for half of it, the scarring around his cybernetic eyes and the hearing aids he'd be deaf without.

"You think she wants any of this? Look at me—I'm a mess."

"You're not," Wolffe said, "and you need to get that kark outta your head before you sabotage yourself. She likes you. It's painfully obvious. Watching you two awkwardly dance around exchanging comms was the cringiest thing I've ever witnessed, and I've broken in three batches of shinies across five different campaigns."

"She doesn't know me," Ghoul insisted. "She doesn't know what I'm really like. I'd just end up…scaring her away."

"Well, don't do that," Wolffe laughed. "How hard is it to just be decent for once?"

"That's easy for you to say," Ghoul snapped. "You don't look like a failed Techno-Union experiment."

"Hey," Wolffe said sharply, tapping on the table, "who're you trying to convince? 'Cause from where I’m standing, the only person who thinks you don’t have a chance is you.”

The worst part about sharing a genetic profile with someone else, Ghoul decided, was that it became impossible to convince either of his brothers that he was incapable of anything other than being an insufferable bastard. Fox was a little hapless when it came to compliments, but Wolffe was relentless, insisting on hyping Ghoul up every chance he got. It was…infuriating.

It was infuriating…and he wanted so badly for Wolffe to be right.

“She…she kissed me,” Ghoul said, spitting the words out before he could change his mind. “After I walked her home. She kissed me. On the mouth.”

Wolffe’s jaw dropped.

“She kissed you,” he said, enunciating every word, “on the mouth…and you still think you don’t have a chance?”

When he laid it out so plainly…it did sound stupid. Ghoul tucked the lower half of his face into the crook of his arm and leaned against the table, wishing the floor would just open up and suck him beneath it. He heard Wolffe sigh and felt his foot nudge between both of his own beneath the table. The ice cubes in the empty glass clinked against one another as they began to melt. 

“Can I be honest with you?” Wolffe asked.

Ghoul shrugged, resigned himself to listening to whatever it was that his brother was going to say. He didn’t have the wherewithal to put up a resistance anymore.

“You’re making this a lot harder than it has to be,” Wolffe continued once he saw no objection coming his way. “She likes you—she obviously and unequivocally likes you. If you like her back, all you have to do is just…go with the flow. No expectations, just…try to relax, enjoy yourself, and have a bit of fun. Follow her lead if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“And after that?” Ghoul croaked. “What do I do after?”

“You just make it up as you go along,” Wolffe chuckled. “Listen, I’m no expert either, but I’ve got a few notches on my belt and…it doesn’t need to last a long time for it to be fun. And who knows? Maybe it’ll turn into something more.”

Ghoul didn’t want to think that far ahead, not when he could scarcely wrap his mind around the present revelation of Odessa actually liking him. He still wasn’t sure he could believe it, not fully at least. 

“Guess I’ll try and find out tomorrow,” he groaned, sitting back up. “I think…I think I’m gonna head out. I don’t feel like drinking anymore.”

“I’ll cover the tab,” Wolffe said, almost immediately. “But I’m gonna stay for a bit.”

“You…want me to, uh–”

“No,” Wolffe said, glancing up at him. “It’s fine. Just…wanna think about things and be alone. Nothin’ about you, I promise.”

If it was a promise made by Wolffe, then it was a promise Ghoul knew he could trust. He nodded and slid out of the booth, almost tripping onto his face when Wolffe suddenly hooked his foot behind Ghoul’s knee.

“Watch your back out there,” he said with a smirk as Ghoul violently untangled their legs before aiming a harsh kick at his thigh. It missed the mark but his intention was clear, and Wolffe made a rude gesture that was accompanied by a wink before tossing Ghoul’s helmet at him.

“Too bad you didn’t drown in your tube,” Ghoul sputtered.

“And miss out on all the action?” Wolffe scoffed. “Please. You couldn’t get rid of me that easily.”

Brothers, Ghoul thought sourly as he stalked out of the bar and back to the barracks.

Odessa didn’t contact him as soon as he thought she might have, but when he awoke in the morning there was a notification on his commlink indicating he had an unread message from a new contact. Still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Ghoul opened it and recognized the address almost immediately for how close it was to the Senate tower. It was far enough from the base to necessitate utilizing the public transport system, a prospect that made the fine hair on the back of his neck stand on edge. He hated the idea of being pressed between so many bodies and crushed together in so small a space…but he figured if he wore his full kit it wouldn’t be so bad, especially with his helmet on. 

Hopefully Odessa wasn’t expecting him to dress down. 

The lift across the city he managed to ignore by going through everything that had happened during his deployment to Ryloth, trying to filter through events that were still statused as classified and the other, less mission critical things that he could get away with revealing to a bunch of civvies. He was still apprehensive about it, didn’t like the idea of information passing into the wrong hands…but if it was just a load of Twi’leks whom Odessa trusted…well, he was already willing to take on one major risk for her sake. What was another thrown into the mix?

Odessa was already waiting for him out front, sitting on a bench in the shade with her backpack next to her and a datapad in her hands. He’d have seen her from a kilometer away with all the skin she was showing, but the dress she wore was also bright, a yellow color that complimented her skin tone. It fluttered in the slight breeze, billowing around her knees until she tucked the edge under her thighs. He didn’t know anything about style or fashion…but it was a good look. Odessa probably knew how to make anything look nice, though.

Being the only trooper around, it didn’t take long for her to spot him. He was already making his way over when she jumped up, stuffing her datapad back into her bag and then running across the plaza to meet him with a smile as dazzling as the sun. She was so pretty that Ghoul felt his heart stutter in his chest at the sight of her. He liked the particular shade of her skin especially, and the way her lekku swayed every time she moved her head. 

“I am so glad you have made it!” she said excitedly as she stopped in front of him, clasping her hands together and bouncing in place. “The address was not too difficult to find?”

“I’m familiar with the area,” Ghoul said, the vocoder in his helmet making his voice sound even grittier than it already was. He pointed toward the Senate buildings looming in the distance, monoliths of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ he was supposed to look toward with respect and gratitude.

“I’ve been up there more times than I care to admit, just to deliver reports,” he said. 

“Oooh,” Odessa cooed, her eyes widening. “That is exciting! I have never been—there is nothing there for someone like me anyway, but one day you must tell me what it is like on the inside!”

Boring, came to mind. Too luxurious for my tastes. A waste of funds that would be better spent helping out good people like you.

“It’s not that impressive,” he said. “You’re not missing out on anything.”

Odessa giggled even though he hadn’t said anything funny and Ghoul wondered if the way the ends of her lekku curled said anything. Ryl language packs could be requested through the GAR itself, but according to Wolffe, what Twi’leks did with their lekku wasn’t universally recognized as a language and therefore had to be picked up colloquially…and if one didn’t possess lekku themselves it was seen as a moot point. The only person Ghoul could think of who might have some insight on how to go about figuring out where to start learning on his own…was Captain Howzer.

Ghoul was glad for his helmet in the moment—it hid his sneer and saved him from having to explain to Odessa why his mood visibly tanked. He’d have to figure out something else eventually, if he planned on actually making the effort to learn more about her culture. There was absolutely no way he was going to ask Howzer for advice.

“Well,” Odessa said, breaking him free of his sour thoughts, “shall we go in? I am excited to be introducing you!”

Ghoul’s apprehension returned, like a pile of slick Trandoshan eels writhing and rolling around in the pit of his stomach. He still didn’t think it was a good idea, but he had already had it out with himself while he was getting ready. Staring down his reflection in a mirror and refusing to disappoint Odessa even though what she had asked of him was…it should have been an easy ‘no’...but he couldn’t do it.

For some reason he just couldn’t look her in the face and turn her down, when the favor she asked of him was…really, it was simple, so small a thing it shouldn’t have been such a big deal. His training was deeply ingrained, however; obedience was something built into every single clone, buried somewhere in the very strands of their DNA. He hated it, fought back against it every chance he got, but there were some things he couldn’t let go of and giving up sensitive information was at the top of that list.

But Wolffe had been right—already several news channels had picked up stories from Ryloth and without saying much had already planted the seed in people’s heads that the Republic Army had something to do with the recent strike the Twi’lek rebellion had made against the Separatist forces. Ghoul figured that he didn’t need to give the refugees a blow-by-blow account to set their minds at ease. It wouldn’t be like those reports he had been forced to write…and at least…maybe this was an audience who’d be a little more appreciative of his efforts.

“Let’s get this over with,” Ghoul sighed, steeling himself. He followed Odessa up to the doors of the Center for Inter-Planetary Affairs and then inside, where she called out to a man sitting behind a counter and glass partition. He glanced up and then balked at the sight of Ghoul, who probably looked out of place dressed in full gear. Again, he was glad for the helmet to hide his face. He didn’t like the way the man stared, but it was the harmless sort that came from being surprised by the sight of a trooper so far from the base. He tried nodding, as if he intended to greet the man, and that seemed to do something to alleviate the man’s misgivings. 

“Uh, guest pass?” the man asked, and Odessa held a finger to her lips. 

“It is a surprise visit,” she said in a conspiratorial tone. “We will not be very long; please keep it to yourself?”

“Y-yeah, I guess,” the man said, shaking himself. “You, uh, know about the other visitors? They’ll be on their way soon.”

“We will not be bothering anyone except my people,” Odessa said, charming her way past a second set of doors that looked like they were meant for employee use only. Ghoul had to turn sideways to fit through the narrow door frame, but he followed after Odessa quickly and quietly, to put as much distance between himself and the employee as possible.

“Thought you said you talked to them already,” he complained, hating the way it made him feel to catch unwanted attention like that.

“My people, yes,” Odessa admitted, “but no one else knows you are here. They would have had us fill out paperwork for hours had they known. But I am always coming and going, so they allow me a little bit of leeway.”

“Oh,” Ghoul said, his stomach churning all over again. “You won’t get in trouble for this?”

“No, they would not dare. I am saving them a lot of time and credits by volunteering my time and services. Without me they would need to hire a translator, so they will be looking the other way sometimes when I show up unannounced. Will you be taking off your helmet? It is not uncomfortable?”

He hadn’t planned on it. The helmet was one of the only things that could still render him just another number among thousands of other clones. Even if his armor wasn’t the standard-issue, there were plenty of other spec-ops who bore the same kit, making it more difficult to pick him out in a lineup—not by much, but it offered just enough protection to give him some peace of mind. Once the helmet came off, that illusion of safety was shattered. 

“Do I have to?” he asked, fighting back the combative instinct rising up inside, making him want to abandon the entire ordeal and head back to the barracks. 

Odessa looked up at him with her head tilted to the side in that way that made her look especially curious.

“Are you not wanting anyone to see you?” she asked gently. “I did already tell them they should not ask rude questions.”

Ghoul’s throat worked uselessly as he tried to swallow and couldn’t. Frustration, the feeling he was most familiar with, made his skin itch as he tried to think of an excuse that didn’t make him sound…pathetic.

“Just…don’t wanna scare anyone,” he said lamely, after coming up with nothing better.

Odessa blinked a few times before offering him a small smile. Normally it was easy for Ghoul to tell when someone felt sorry for him—it was a sad, pitying look he just knew made them feel so noble and good about themselves. He knew they thought he should be so grateful for their compassion, but it was always unasked for and unwanted. They could take their self-righteous sympathy and shove it up their ass.

But, try as he might, Ghoul couldn’t find any sign that Odessa pitied him. She just smiled softly, the curve of her lips very slight, almost gentle, like she understood him in a way that no one else did.

“You do not have to,” she said. “If it will make you more comfortable to keep it on, then do so. No one will object”

There was no sign on the door to dictate what he should or shouldn’t do, and if she didn’t care then he was going to keep it on. Still, he felt…relief at having been given the choice. For a moment he thought she was going to insist…but she managed to surprise him again. She was good at that.

“Thanks,” he said, meaning it. 

“You are welcome. Now, follow me closely; there are many people here, but most are staying with their own species. Ignore everyone else.”

She pushed through another employee door at the end of the short hallway, leading them into an enormous room that made the mess hall back on base look like a custodial closet. Ghoul didn’t know where to look first, but the first thing that caught his attention were the rows upon rows of bunk beds, not unlike the same ones issued to the GAR that he and thousands of other clones slept in every night. At a glance he thought there had to be a few hundred of them, and every single one sported the same dingy mattress and dull gray sheets, as well as a single pillow too flat to be of any real comfort. Piled around each pair of bunks were bags and small storage crates—personal belongings, he realized.

The bunks gave way to an open area where he saw a gaggle of children playing, kicking a ball around and passing it back and forth as their guardians watched them from chairs and tables nearby. At the far end of the hall sat a long row of counters Ghoul almost immediately recognized as the same kind of setup back on base for the mess hall. It seemed like they had tried to cram as much as they could into the room to try and utilize every millimeter of space they had…and as he continued to look around, Ghoul realized that it still wasn’t enough. 

There were so many people. 

He could see everything from Bothans to Mon Calamari scattered about the room, and a little bit of every other species sprinkled in between. There were only a few he didn’t immediately recognize, and a few that surprised him like to see, like the giant Wooke who nearly ran him over as they chased after a couple of squealing younglings. It was a rare sight to see a Wookie anywhere else but Kashyyyk. 

The murmur of conversation flowed around him—he caught snippets of Huttese, Kenari, and Rodian, but mostly broken strings of Basic. He understood a few languages, as most clones had been encouraged to pick up at least one other besides Basic, but Mando’a was more for his own personal, private use than anything, and Huttese only came in handy when he was dealing with lowlife scum closer to the Outer Rim. 

Should have picked Ryl, he thought to himself as Odessa led him to a far corner where a handful of Twi’lek were already gathered around in a circle, seemingly waiting for them to arrive.

“Juun!” Odessa called out, capturing the attention of one of the male Twi’lek. He turned to look, his expression shifting from mild annoyance to outright joy as he caught sight of her, and he stood up, throwing his arms wide in greeting.

“Odessa, Kassurra!” he said, hugging her when Odessa got close enough. 

“Kei’nata nei,” she replied, returning the hug with enthusiasm. Several other Twi’lek got up from their seats to greet her and a couple children threw their skinny arms around her waist to hang off of her. Ghoul watched the reunion, feeling like an outsider intruding on something he wasn’t meant to see. Odessa was…clearly beloved. The looks on their faces said more than words ever could and he guessed that all her time and effort spent volunteering must have really paid off for them to treat her with such regard.

Odessa gestured back to him as she spoke to her people—they spared him curious glances, but thankfully paid more attention to whatever it was that she was saying. Ghoul didn’t think there was going to be much he could offer them. He had a mental list of things he was willing to divulge, but he sincerely doubted it would be enough to bring them any sort of relief. After all, they were stuck living in cramped quarters with no real privacy of their own. It reminded him of the conditions he and his fellow clones were forced to live in…but he was a soldier. The cacophony of noises surrounding them wasn’t unlike the sort of thing he was used to ignoring in the barracks, along with the scent of so many bodies sharing so little space. 

"Ghoul?"

He flinched and looked up, realizing that Odessa and all the other Twi'lek were staring at him…waiting on him. Beneath his blacks he could feel sweat drip down the small of his back.

"Didn't wanna interrupt," he managed to say. 

Odessa bought it—of course she did—and gestured for him to step forth. He did, one foot at a time, each one dragging like it weighed a ton. He saw her hand reaching for him, her fingers finding the space between his vambrace and rerebrace and curling into the crook of his elbow. He shuddered at her touch, but didn't shy away from it. She was gentle, guiding him alongside her as she stepped into the center of the little gathering. 

"You are not interrupting," she said softly, squeezing him in reassurance. Ghoul had never been more grateful that she had chanced to take hold of him by his left arm instead of the cold and unfeeling right.

“I can’t say much,” he reminded her, trying to ignore all the expectant eyes looking his way. 

"I already told them. They are grateful regardless. Anything you can reveal would mean the world to them."

"I don't speak Ryl."

"I will translate," Odessa said with more patience than he would have had. She looked up at him, her eyes scanning across his helmet's visor until he wondered if she could somehow see through the dark lens.

"Do not be nervous," she said, squeezing him again. "I am right here with you."

Damnit.

"Uh…right," Ghoul said, simulating a cough to give himself room to start. He quickly filtered through his mental list of what he thought was acceptable to share and took a deep breath.

Across the room, doors hissed open and he heard the exclamations of more than a few people. He couldn’t help but glance over…and immediately wished he hadn’t.

He’d recognize those brown robes anywhere.

“Uh,” he said again, stiffening up. Odessa noticed, because how could she not, with the way his whole body tensed at the sight of the two Jedi who swept into the room amid a chorus of eager cries and salutations, like they were saviors come to liberate the refugees from their sorry existence. She looked over, following the tilt of his helmet until she too caught sight of them.

“Ghoul?” she asked, squeezing his arm. “Are you alright?”

I’m fine, he tried to say, but no sound came out. 

He hated Jedi—he hated them and their over-inflated sense of self-importance and he hated the way they acted like they knew better than everyone else, just because of some mystical connection to ‘the Force’, whatever that was. They claimed not to be soldiers, but they expected clones to follow their lead on the battlefield regardless. They played games, spoke in riddles, and acted like every life lost was ‘the will of the Force’. The entire order could burn down to the ground for all he cared, as long as they stayed the hell away from him.

Odessa wouldn’t know that though, because he had never mentioned it. 

He never wanted to, and in a perfect world where everything went his way he never would.

But the Jedi circled closer, hands tucked into the wide sleeves of their robes and benevolent smiles on their faces like they were doing some great service gracing the center with their presence. He wanted to vomit.

“Ghoul,” Odessa said, shaking his arm a bit. The Twi’lek she had addressed first, Juun, said something in Ryl and then grimaced.

“Is he…well?” he asked in Basic, his accent thicker than Odessa’s.

“I do not know,” she said. 

“Fine,” Ghoul finally bit out. “I’m…I’m fine. Just…I have to go.”

“What is happening?” Odessa pressed, concern making her eyebrows knit together. She hadn’t let go of him and even though she only touched him through the protective layer of his blacks, Ghoul felt his skin start to crawl. There were too many people around, too much space and not enough of it at the same time. Every step the Jedi took that drew them closer made Ghoul feel like he was being boxed in, cornered. He looked around, trying to find the door they had come in through, but there was a throng of people blocking his line of sight.

Unease started to devolve into panic and he tried shaking Odessa off. 

“You are not okay,” she said, letting go of his arm immediately when it became apparent that something was wrong. “Is it the Jedi? If they are bothering you I will talk to them, perhaps they can—”

“No,” Ghoul snapped, “Just…just shut up. I don’t need you to do anything. Don’t talk to them, don’t even…just leave me alone for a minute. I have to…have to….”

He didn’t want to look at the hurt on her face when he spoke to her like that. Odessa didn’t deserve any of his ire, but she was the one who was closest, making herself a convenient target with the way she tried to console him. There was nothing she could do, nothing that would make things right. She didn’t understand and he wasn’t going to waste his breath trying to explain even if she went over and told the Jedi to get lost, it wouldn’t change anything. 

She couldn’t change the past.

“I think you are needing to sit down,” she insisted. “Take off your helmet. I will get you something to drink.”

“No,” he growled, pushing her hand away when she tried to take hold of his arm again. He didn’t want to sit down. He needed to leave. The other Twi’lek were looking at him strangely, as well as some of the other people closest. Ghoul was aware that they could hear him, see him, and that he was beginning to draw too much attention to himself. If he acted out anymore the Jedi would take notice and come over to stick their noses where they didn’t belong, and then—

“Can you lift me?” 

“Yes, of course. You don’t look that heavy.”

“No, with magic!”

“It’s not magic, little one, but the Force.”

“Use it to lift me!”

Ghoul squeezed his eyes shut and tried to drown out the sounds of children begging the Jedi to regale them with their mystical party tricks. They were too close now, much too close for his liking. His finger twitched, but he had left his blaster back at the barracks, for safety; he hadn’t expected to need it. He didn’t need it. He wasn’t in danger. He knew this, he knew it, but—

“Ghoul,” Odessa, pleaded, both of her small hands curling around one his, cradling it tight. He hadn’t moved at all, just stood there, paralyzed by something he couldn’t explain, something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

You need therapy, Wolffe’s voice called out to him, but it was so far away, so distant he knew his brother couldn’t help him, didn’t even know where he was.

“I have to leave,” he whispered.

“Show us your light sword!”

“I don’t know…it isn’t a toy.”

“Don’t be so rigid, they’re only curious. Here, you all may look, but no touching.”

PSSHEEWW

The sound of the lightsaber ignition drowned out everything else. So close, Ghoul felt as though he could hear it inside his head and all throughout his bones, like the hum of the blade was something tangible eating its way underneath his skin.

Suddenly, he wasn’t on Coruscant anymore. He wasn’t safe inside a refugee center, Odessa’s hands wrapped around his. 

When Ghoul opened his eyes, the only thing he could see…was Toydaria, the swampy, muggy landscape on fire around him and the bloodied, shattered bodies of his men, his brothers, littered at his feet. He balked as he looked around, not understanding how he had ended up back there when he had sworn never to step foot on that planet again, no matter what kind of orders he received. Separatist ships screamed overhead, flying so low he could feel the vibrations from their repulsor engines through his boots…or maybe that was the distant explosions caused by proton torpedos slamming into the ground.

He tried to suck in a breath, tried to activate his commlink to call for an extraction, but his arm didn’t move. He tried again and pain shot up his shoulder and into his ribs; when he looked down, he saw why—his arm didn’t move because it wasn’t there. All that was left was the bloody and charred stump, the bone jutting through his skin.

Ghoul tried screaming, but that didn’t work either. All that emanated from his mouth was a wet, rasping gurgle and too late he realized his mouth was gone, bottom jaw and tongue ripped away in an explosion he hadn’t even seen. Blood and gore drenched his chestplate, soaking into his blacks and sticking to his skin. He couldn’t even feel pain anymore, couldn’t feel anything at all, just the steady hum of a lightsaber in his head, the whooom sound it made when swung and screams echoing in the distance.

They were dead, his men were all dead and he was too, he was dying and no one cared, no one cared enough to stop it from happening. 

“Commander,” he heard from somewhere by his feet.

He looked down and stared into the deathly pale face of one of his brothers, a clone whose name he could no longer remember, blood bubbling out from between his lips in a frothy pink mess. He grabbed at Ghoul’s boot, broken fingers scrabbling for purchase against his greaves. 

“It’s okay,” he slurred, “they can always make more of us.”

Ghoul took a step back and stumbled, his foot slipping against mud…except it wasn’t mud. Slick, crimson lengths of ropey intestines spewed over the ground, the mangled bodies of his unit strewn in front of him, all of them looking at him, through him, their eyes glassy and pale and rimmed with blood.

“They’ll just make more,” they spoke as one, their voices coalescing into a polyphonic chorus that threatened to overwhelm him. Ghoul tried to clap his hands over his ears but he couldn’t—it wouldn't have mattered if he could.

The voices came from within.

“Ghoul!”

“Leave me alone,” he groaned. “Please, just leave me alone!”

Hands pulled at him, trying to drag him down into the muck; he resisted at first, but then thought…why should he? He belonged there with them, dying alongside his brothers as had been intended. It was only luck that had saved him, luck and…and….

The hands tugged at him harder and he gave up, his feet moving freely as he allowed himself to be pulled.

But instead of going down to be buried beneath the still warm bodies of his unit, the hands tugged him sideways, away from the field of carnage, away from the pained screams and the distant explosions that sent a ringing through his ears until it overtook everything else, mercifully silencing even the sound of the lightsaber. Eventually Ghoul felt something solid at his back and hands prying his helmet off his head; it was then he began to thrash—the helmet was the only thing keeping him together, keeping him from falling apart—what was left of him would come undone if they removed it.

I don’t wanna die, a tiny little voice whispered in the back of his mind. I haven’t lived long enough, I don’t wanna die!

But he couldn’t fight what he couldn’t see and the hands were too insistent—the helmet came off and a bright light assaulted his eyes. Ghoul gasped, then yelled unintelligibly, his voice strangled. 

Kamino.

He was back on Kamino and they were killing them. 

The clones who were left alive, who somehow survived alongside him, the longnecks were murdering them. He held his arms up, trying to fend off the hands that wanted to inject him with needles, sending him into a dreamless sleep from which he’d never wake, but he was too weak from blood loss. He couldn’t scream, couldn’t fight, couldn’t breathe, and they were going to kill him too, because what good was he anymore?

“Shhhh,” a voice said. “It is okay. Breathe. You are safe!”

He didn’t believe it. He wasn’t any safer in the hands of the Kaminoans than he was on the battlefield. No one understood, no one knew what they were really capable of. He couldn’t breathe. There was just wet wheezing when he tried, like his lungs couldn’t get full enough to exhale and his heart, beating so fast he thought it was going to burst out of his chest at any moment. The hands touched his face and he jerked like he had been shot, trying to pull away, but then he felt himself being pulled down and felt his forehead…felt it touch someone else’s.

Wolffe? he wondered. Fox?

“You are safe,” the voice repeated. “I am here, I will not let anything happen to you.”

Ghoul gasped, trying to wrench his head away, but he couldn’t move. His body felt too heavy and none of his limbs wanted to obey him anymore. The ringing in his ears lessened, replaced with the pounding of his heart and the sounds of his own voice, wretched and embarrassingly loud as he sobbed. He managed a blink and his eyes felt wet—too late he realized he was crying, tears streaming down his cheeks and neck. He blinked again, trying to focus his eyes long enough for his brain to make sense of what he was seeing.

It wasn’t Toydaria, nor was it Kamino. 

It was…a dirty back alleyway on Coruscant, duracrete beneath his boots and at his back, the sun shining overhead…and Odessa in front of him, her hands cupped around his face and her forehead pressed to his. Her eyes were shut and she bit into her bottom lip, pressed so close to him that she was practically sandwiching him against the wall…but for some strange reason…her proximity didn’t feel so suffocating.

“Take deep breaths,” she whispered. “With me. Try to follow along. In…and out.”

She drew in a slow breath and Ghoul tried to copy her, gasping painfully as he tried to remember how his body was meant to work. 

He was safe, she said. 

They both exhaled at the same time, Odessa’s slow and steady while Ghoul erupted into a coughing fit. She was patient though, so patient and she held onto him, looking him in the eyes and thumbing the patches of skin along his cheekbones to wipe away his tears.

“Again,” she urged, and this time when he inhaled it didn’t hurt so much. His lungs filled and the lightheadedness he had begun to feel went away. He exhaled shakily, ahead of her prompting, and then inhaled again. He could breathe. He could breathe. He wasn’t bleeding or dying. He was safe.

He was alive.

Odessa never left his side. Her hands fell from his face to his shoulders once the worst of the panic attack had abated, but she stayed pressed against him like she knew the pressure of her small body against his would be enough to ground him back in reality. She didn’t say much, but watched him carefully, like she was looking for any signs of further distress. He almost couldn’t bear the weight of her eyes on him…in some way it was more painful than what he had just experienced.

“Do you want me to get you anything?” Odessa eventually asked, once his breathing had returned to mostly normal. “Water? Something to eat?”

“N-no,” Ghoul managed to say, despite the components of his lower jaw feeling like they were about to overheat from friction. “I’m…I’m good.”

“That is a lie,” Odessa snorted. “I am seeing that now. You like to say you are fine when you are not. You were not ‘good’ just a few minutes ago.”

Ghoul didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say, outside of apologizing to her for exposing her to his…his issues. Shame curled around his neck like a hangman’s noose, tightening until he felt like choking. She didn’t deserve to have all of him inflicted upon her. She was too good and too kind…and he hadn’t done anything deserving of her attention.

“You don’t have to stick around,” he said, taking hold of her wrists and pushing her away. He slumped against the wall until he dropped onto his ass, holding his head in his hands and trying to fight off the overwhelming urge to throw himself off the top of the Senate buildings.

“I’m a mess.”

Ghoul could feel her eyes on the top of his head and he hoped, wished she’d take the hint and just…leave him alone. Misery had already sunk its claws into him and he was no longer fit for company. But to his surprise, she sighed and tucked her dress around her thighs before crouching down beside him.

“You have been through a lot,” she said, hugging her knees and resting her cheek on top. “It does not make you messy…but I can see it is something you have trouble managing on your own.”

“It was just a panic attack,” Ghoul mumbled, hanging his head. “Happens all the time to most of us.”

“That was not a panic attack,” Odessa said firmly. “You have…something like my father. I do not know what to call it in Basic. It is worse. It is like…something terrible happened, and suddenly you are reminded of it. And you…see it happening again. Like you are there, all over again.”

Ghoul whipped his head up, staring at her with his mouth fallen open.

“It's PTSD,” he croaked. “How’d you know?”

Odessa shrugged and took hold of the ends of her lekku, bringing them together in a fidget.

“My father suffers the same affliction,” she said. “Sometimes he will hear a noise, or smell something strange, and he will just…stop moving. His eyes are open but he is not seeing what is in front of him. Sometimes he is not himself. I have seen him cry and rage and break things during his episodes.”

“...what happened to him?”

It was a question he hated when other people asked him…it was audacious of him to even think he had any right to ask someone else, but Odessa didn’t seem to mind. She took a deep breath and sighed heavily, still occupying her hands with her lekku.

“He watched my mother die,” she said softly. “He could not save her…and it haunts him.”

“Oh…I’m…I’m sorry.”

It was the first time he could remember apologizing in a long time, and he didn’t even know what he was apologizing for. As a clone, they didn’t have mothers, or anything remotely close to a maternal figure. He didn’t know what it was like to lose a parent…but ‘sorry’ felt like the kind of thing he was supposed to say.

“It happened last year,” she said, her voice still soft and sad. “He sent me to Coruscant because he did not want the same thing to be happening to me.”

“Was it the Separatists?” Ghoul asked, curious. Distracting himself made it feel better, helped him push aside the shame and regret. He realized he didn’t know that much about her, apart from the things she had told him. Odessa nodded and dropped her lekku to hug her knees again, squeezing herself tight.

“They sent a bounty hunter after my father,” she said. “He saw something, I think, that was very sensitive to their plans. He was not home when the hunter came, but my mother and I were.”

Ghoul’s breath caught in his chest.

“You were there too?” he asked.

“...yes.”

“...what happened?”

Odessa scrunched up her face and turned away. For a moment he thought he had crossed a line, that he had asked too much of her and that she was going to stand up and leave him sitting there in the dank alleyway. He wouldn’t have blamed her; it was just his luck that he didn’t know how to carry a conversation. Selfishly, he had only wanted to distract himself, at the cost of her own comfort. His stomach dropped at the thought that maybe he had hurt her by being too insensitive, but he didn’t know what to say to make it better.

But he didn’t need to. Odessa looked back at him, her eyes watery but determined.

“The hunter tried to use us as bait,” she said. “He planned to wait for my father to return home and ambush him. I think it would have worked if not for my mother. She was very smart, really very good with mechanical and electrical work. She would always be tinkering with something…so she was able to slip out of her stasis cuffs.”

“That’s impressive,” Ghoul said truthfully.

“Yes. She surprised the hunter as he attacked my father…tried to take his blaster from him. But….”

She looked about to cry and Ghoul didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t the comforting type; he didn’t know how to do what she did and he didn’t know if any attempt would be welcome, so he sat there and waited, hoping it was enough for her that he was listening. Odessa dragged the back of her hand over her eyes and sniffled.

“She did not know how to use a blaster,” she said angrily. “All the times she asked my father to teach her and he refused, because he did not want her to become more involved! If she had known, maybe she would still be alive. If he was not so stubborn….”

Something clicked inside of Ghoul’s brain and he looked up at her in shock.

“Is that…is that why you were…at the range, you didn’t want to hold it. The blaster. And I…kriff, you should have said something! I…I wouldn’t have made you if I had–”

“No,” Odessa said, shaking her head. “No, I wanted to learn! My father refused to teach me for the same reason he did not teach my mother. Truthfully, he is very protective…but he thought he could keep us away from the war. I know his intentions were noble, but….”

“He can’t protect you from everything,” Ghoul supplied for her. “That’s just…stupid. Better if you can defend yourself, if the need arises.”

The look she shot his way was almost grateful and she nodded in agreement before tucking her lekku back over her shoulders.

“You were the first person who was on my side,” she said. “It made me like you even more.”

Ghoul felt his pulse quicken, but thankfully this time it had nothing to do with panic. He thought about asking her what she meant, but the timing felt…off, like it’d be wrong to take away from where they were now, sitting on the ground and baring parts of themselves to each other that were still raw and bleeding around the edges, like a scab that had been picked at too many times.

He didn’t know if he had it in him to be as trusting with his own vulnerabilities. The idea of giving anyone ammo that could be used against him made him want to peel his skin off. The one time he had tried talking to the military-approved therapist, she had pried for details he hadn’t been ready to give and then grew upset with him when he ended the session early. He didn’t like being pressured…he hated when people stared because he knew what was going through their heads. They wanted to know so bad it ate them up on the inside to hold their tongues.

“You don’t ever ask me anything about the way I look,” Ghoul said, surprising himself with how steady his voice held. “How come?”

Odessa looked over at him with a frown, almost like she was insulted. The ends of her lekku twitched and Ghoul tried to memorize the exact way they moved, because he was going to find a way to translate what they were saying even if it killed him.

“It is not my place to ask,” she said evenly. “If you are wanting me to know, then you will tell me. Until then, I have no say.”

“You’re not curious?”

“Even if I am, why is it that my curiosity is being more important than your comfort?”

Oh.

Warmth spread through him from head to toe, erasing the last uncomfortable vestiges his episode had left prickling under his skin. He didn’t know what it was like to fall for someone…but he imagined it was…it had to be something like this, looking at Odessa and realizing that she saw someone worth respecting. Any other day he might’ve thought it pathetic that his standards were so low…but for now…for now he just let the feeling flow through him, basking in the way she looked at him with a small, secretive smile he wanted to believe was for him alone.

“Thank you,” he said softly. “I…don't…I'm not used to people sticking around for so long. You're probably the first."

"First what?" Odessa asked, confused.

"Uh…friend," Ghoul said, rubbing the back of his neck. "You're the first friend I've had since…since before I looked like this."

Odessa stilled for a moment, then scooted closer, so that their arms touched. He held his breath, trying to figure out what she was up to, and then froze in place as she laid her head against the hard shoulder plate of his armor.

"You are my first real friend too," she admitted. "I am glad to have met you."

Ghoul swallowed hard, the motion painful, and waited for the usual round of doubt to hit him…and he kept waiting because it never did. She wasn't pulling his leg or leading him on…she really meant it. The part of him that was quick to reject any notion that didn't support his usual self-loathing was mercifully silent. He didn't dare move and barely breathed out of fear that if he did either she'd find her excuse to leave.

"You want to stay here?" Odessa asked after a moment.

"I…I don't wanna go back in there," Ghoul said. "You'll have to tell your friends that I…that I had something come up, and–"

"I will make up something," she said. "Do not worry yourself about it."

"...I don't feel like moving."

"Then we sit here."

"...why are you so—"

So damn pretty?

"—nice?"

Odessa rolled her head against his shoulder to look up at him. She blinked and he could see the individual striations that made up her blue eyes, the lighter flecks that made it look like they sparkled in the sunlight.

"What else am I supposed to be?" she asked.

He didn't have an answer for that and sat back against the wall, stretching his legs out in front of him and trying not to think about how strange they looked. But then Odessa pressed closer, slipping her arm beneath his and resting her hand on his vambrace. The next time he glanced down at her she had her eyes shut.

Slowly…very slowly, Ghoul allowed himself to take a breath, then another. When she didn't immediately get up and run away, he sighed in relief. He didn't know how long it was going to take for his legs to stop feeling like they were made of gelatin…but for as long as she was willing to sit with him, he figured he could handle it.

[t00thpasteface]

"it's very problematic to make your space aliens autistic-coded" SPEAK FOR YOURSELF 👽👽👽👽👽🛸🛸🛸 ALIEN LASER BLAST ATTACK ✨✨✨🌠🌠🌠🌠🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

[wintergrofyuri]

[noxcheshire]

Back again with Danny being adopted by other batfam members.

But this time I thought of the absolute comedy of Damian, tiny squirt and five apples tall, deciding that he is now a father to a grown ass teenage Danny.

It was an accident and had never been his intention to adopt another being.

But it had been placed into Damian’s head that in order to be a potential Batman he had to have his own Robin. And the only way to have his own Robin was to have a child, similar to the way that Father would pick up the various children and teenagers amongst them.

Damain had a very specific list of requirements for his potential child-Robin. Danny did not meet any of those requirements, and yet here Damian was having forged papers for the now Daniel Al Ghul-Wayne, and beginning the treacherous affair of introducing his son to the family.

Danny twisted his new shirt sleeve with a frown. It was a nice green silk that complimented the little green that resided in his son’s eyes. Damian wished to bring out the many carefully crafted features of Danny that could match to Damian. Having his eyes pop, wild hair brushed and losing the battle to nervous hands, would have to do.

At least until Damian taught Danny his mother tongue and began the care of his culture and soon to be heritage.

[sunderwight]

Shen Yuan who glitches in his transmigration, but the original Shen Qingqiu still dies of a qi deviation.

So the System still needs someone with narrative relevance to throw Luo Binghe into the Abyss. In a fit of desperation, it contrives circumstances after Shen Qingqiu's death to move Luo Binghe to An Ding Peak (not that difficult), and then the System makes Shang Qinghua be Luo Binghe's new scum master who casts him down.

Airplane's thrilled, really. Cultivators aren't supposed to get ulcers but damned if he doesn't come close to one anyway. Between Shen Qingqiu and then just a while later Liu Qingge both dying from qi deviations, and Shang Qinghua looking like a stiff breeze could take him out any day now, poor Mu Qingfang is also just about at his wits' end.

But it's not all bad news! On An Ding Peak, Luo Binghe actually finds himself surrounded by the kinds of people who are accustomed to being bullied by the rest of the sect. So they're pretty sympathetic to him, and it's easier for someone with basic laboring skills to advance on that peak too. His chores don't decrease too much, but he actually gets rewarded for doing them well, and no one tries to kick him out of the dorms or anything. Shang Qinghua doesn't either go out of his way to bully or praise Luo Binghe, correctly reasoning that his best shot at not getting a gruesome death is to just be a more forgettable bad guy than an abusive dirtbag or a heart-wrenching betrayal. He doesn't sabotage Luo Binghe's cultivation (no point, and it would just farm resentment later) but he also doesn't go out of his way to help him improve (not gonna arm his inevitable maybe-probably-murderer with better weapons!), so Luo Binghe's situation sees an overall improvement but not the zero-to-hero treatment he'd have got with Shen Yuan either.

When Shang Qinghua shoves Luo Binghe into the Abyss (he just full on picks him up and tosses him like a sack of beans, better to rip it off quick like a bandage), LBH is upset, but he's not especially surprised or dismayed about Shang Qinghua's part in it. Later on he'll be kind of confused, because he just assumed that of course the righteous sect cultivator would abhor the demon, but it turns out Shang Qinghua has been working for a demon since before Luo Binghe even came to the sect? But then it still kind of makes sense because a Heavenly Demon would definitely pose a risk to Mobei Jun and to Mobei Jun's rule. Shang Qinghua, he supposes, is just really loyal to his specific demon.

Luo Binghe's subsequent revenge quest is also somewhat mitigated by the Abyss actually not being that bad.

The Abyss is not actually that bad thanks to the glitched out Shen Yuan having been camping there for several years now.

So when Shen Yuan's transmigration failed it failed because he "woke up" during the process, realized where the System intended to put him, was like no way in goddamn hell am I being that guy about it, and actually kind of won the ensuing tug-of-war. The System couldn't put him in Shen Qingqiu but Shen Yuan didn't want to go back to his dead body either, so he ended up stuck in the nearest available space for lost interdimensional beings. Which was the Endless Abyss.

Luckily Shen Yuan's quasi-transmigrated imparted an equivalent cultivation level as Shen Jiu's to him, and the glitch made him able to sense and manipulate certain extra-dimensional energies, so he manifested as this weird godlike being able to manipulate and control aspects of the Abyss. So he set about transforming Airplane's Torment Nexus into a viable ecosystem (the current version would not be anything approaching sustainable were it not for divine/narrative intervention, and is constantly on the verge of destabilizing into unlivable ruin that would only be fit for some particularly hardy microorganisms).

It's still like, a monster land full of demonic creatures and terrifying phenomenon, but with Shen Yuan's assistance it becomes something more like a demonic wildlife reserve than a dimensional horror plane. Though it is still a dimensional horror plane, and Shen Yuan is its chief dimensional horror. He treats it sort of like those dungeon building or wildlife park sims, figuring out how to keep everything in balance while still preserving all the interesting parts. A lot of the extreme survival issues of the Abyss are more of a result of it being environmentally unstable than a result of its actual denizens, and once he smooths out a lot of the messy dimensional edges and creates stable vents for the fluctuating energy run-off, the demonic inhabits start behaving less like horror movie monsters and more like animals. They're still wild and dangerous and prone to killing one another, but also more cautious, and able to access enough stable resources that they can even start to be picky about what they pursue.

Turns out that a lot of creatures in the Abyss actually don't like fighting and dying and being brutally injured on a regular basis, even if they can heal from it!

Shen Yuan has even discovered that some like chin scritches (he's not terribly worried about habituating them to people, given how rarely any people actually access the Abyss, but also because he's not really all that people-ish himself these days).

This means that one of Luo Binghe's first encounters with the horrible creatures of the Abyss, is in fact a pack of wolf-like monsters thoroughly avoiding an actual fight with him. In fact most of the denizens of the Abyss just avoid him. They can smell the Heavenly Demon energy rolling off of him, and given the current abundance of alternatives to dealing with that, virtually none of the monsters actually choose to challenge him. There are still a few that will go after anything that's bleeding, but that problem stops once Luo Binghe's physiology heals his wounds, which takes like... a couple hours, max.

Despite the stories he's heard, Luo Binghe is relieved to find that the Abyss is not quite so terrible as all that. Normal survival skills suffice for seeing him through much of it. He's able to hunt for food, scavenge for tools, and even finds potable water fairly easily. After a few weeks, he also comes across a ruin which seems to be inhabited.

The being inhabiting it is plainly a god, although he demurs and refutes such assertions whenever Binghe is too frank. He's a strange being, at turns looking like some queer approximation of a human, at other times blinking and winking in and out of existence, in patterns of strange lights and oddly geometrical fire. But he's surprisingly not hostile, letting Binghe rest in his residence, and even directing him towards points of interest. Accompanying him, too, though he seems to think that Binghe doesn't notice the odd almost spiderweb-like patterns that appear on things which he's influencing. The god calls himself The Peerless One, or at least that's what Luo Binghe infers from some writings on the ruin. The Peerless One offers instruction, seemingly without thinking about it, and gets flustered at being addressed by title, so Binghe also begins to refer to him as Shizun after a while.

[nexiscool]

I colored some Zim sketches

[ningadudexx]

I love 𝓿𝓻𝓸 ❤️🕊️

[hyuckonia]

very first 10 seconds of the tsum event and Kalim getting beaned by his tsum and lilia was like "oh guess i wasnt fast enough to stop it myb bro" SHUT UPPPDNAHAAJHA KALIMS SCREAM HAD ME LAUGHING SO HARD I WAS GUNNA CRY whatever i love them so badLMAOOOOO

[forecast0ctopus]

What if yellow star trek and blue star trek kissed

[pallanophblargh]

I have a disproportionately loud mess of a head for no discernible reason* so it’s kind of a miracle that I spent the last month and some change willing myself to wield watercolor again. Witness the struggle! A long overdue color sketch for a (super patient) client.

Just watercolor with a boop of gouache.

*they are a mush of small but immense problems??? Executive dysfunction being maximized by meds the main culprit…

[anbaisai]

And down, down, down they fell...

(Part of a trade with @raven-at-the-writing-desk!)

[obscureenthusiast]

-Brutus and as many as 60 co-conspirators, circa March 14th, 44 BC

[labrysknot]

Big, beefy, rough-handed barbarian women whose stomachs and tits jiggle and ripple while they fuck you. You agree. Reblog.

[moonlightmagical]

what prozac and therapy does for a motherfucker!!!!!!

[gratiae-mirabilia]

“[insert aspect of Christian holiday] has PAGAN ROOTS 😱”

yeah and St. Paul had killing-Christians-roots lol. we baptized him, we baptized your pagan traditions, we’ll baptize you too

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 264

Danny squints at his tiny hands, eyes narrowing as Clockwork hums in the kitchen. Which he wasn’t even aware of having been in LongNow. Maybe it wasn’t. He huffed, voice too squeaky for him to continue complaining. Stupid time accidents. 

Which wasn’t even starting on the other figure awkwardly sitting at the table. 

He glowered at the Ghost King, who kept glancing at him with an unreadable look in their eyes, then looked back towards where Clockwork was. His scowl deepened over his cup of tea- which wasn’t fair, he wanted coffee but nooo, that’s not healthy for ‘little ghostlings’. Ugh.

Sometimes he wished he was fully ghost so he didn’t have to apparently worry about his living body having to grow back up.