#its the jedi equivalent of putting up your hair

[raphaerolo]

Tasuki

[dameronology]

asystole {obi-wan kenobi x reader}

summary: ‘the trouble is the way you stick, to any part of me that remains in tact/but if i pull the plug, it isn’t only me i’m holding back’ - asystole, hayley williams (a.k.a ‘the one where you’re the bane of obi-wan’s life, even as a force ghost’) 

warnings: mentions of death, swearing, angst, and me not having a single fucking clue how force ghosts work 

this was originally based on a random idea i had and also encouragement from kara/@hellotherekenobi who requested a prompt that i completely forgot to include but...we move. also, i would highly highly recommend listening to the above song just because it’s a real tear jerker and i lOVE it 

enjoy 

- jazz 

Loss, for Obi-Wan, was not a stranger. It was an old acquaintance, constantly lingering beside him -- not quite there, but not gone either. He could always feel its presence, a constant and painful reminder of everyone he’d lost. He could probably count them all one hand but that didn’t make it any better. Loss was loss, whether it were two people or ten. Even if his grief had stopped and started with the passing of his master all those years ago, it was still something he felt in its wholeness and in its entirety. Because that’s all Obi-Wan could do: feel. It was everything or nothing. Zero percent or one hundred.

And with you, he wished it were nothing. He wished that your sudden absence from his life was something he didn’t have to feel in every fibre of his being. It was hard enough to acknowledge and even more painful to comprehend. You were the one person he’d always just assumed would be there forever. How foolish it now seemed, he was very much aware. Everybody died -- Qui-Gon Jinn was a testament to that; as was Satine Kryze and quite literally every other person in the galaxy who’d had the pleasure of being reminded of their mortality. It was just that this was...it was you. You weren’t immortal by any means but maker, you had acted like it. The way you went about life with an air of recklessness and discontent for the rules, making even the hardest of missions into an adventure. His life had been a thousand times better since you’d come running - nay, stumbling - into it. You’d blown his entire world to bits and pieced it back together with tiny, intricate bits of yours. Filled it with chaos and laughter and a light he hadn’t felt since the days of his youth. 

Perhaps most importantly, you’d looked after one another. He would stay by your side 24/7 to make sure you kept your head screwed on your shoulders, and you would pester him to drink water and remember to eat. He would remind you when you had important missions and meetings, and in return, you’d proof-read his paper work. He remembered the first time he’d fallen asleep beside you, to wake up with a blanket wrapped around him and his boots pulled off. It was so clear in his head because it was the first time someone had ever done anything for him without asking. It became something you did often, and though he never said it, it was something he kept so close to his heart. 

Obi-Wan wasn’t a fool. He knew you weren’t going to be around forever - he just didn’t realise that not forever was going to be a whole lot sooner that he’d anticipated. He used to make jokes about how your recklessness would one day lead to your demise. The idea of it made him feel sick now. He’d been right the entire time. He didn’t want it to be real.

None of it felt real. The whole conversation he’d had with Mace Windu about you not making it felt like a distant nightmare, something he’d tried so hard to wake up from, only to find that he was wide awake the entire fucking time. Night terrors were bad, but reality was arguably worse. 

It didn’t feel right at first, to see your chambers still filled with your stuff and your lightsaber still resting on your nightstand. Obi had been the one to put it there when you’d been taken to the infirmary, thinking you would have asked for it when you woke up - but you didn’t. It went hand-in-hand with the robes he’d hung up on your door and the get well soon, moron card he’d brought you. 

Then, they emptied your room. Took your clothes and your books and every other worldly possession you had. Your name was removed from the door to your quarters and added to the list of Jedi who had died in combat on the stone in the Temple gardens. Aside from that, any sign that you had ever walked the halls or burst into council meetings at the last minute was gone. You lived on only in his memories, your lopsided smile ingrained into his mind and contagious laugh echoing constantly in his brain. 

Throwing himself into work was the only option for Obi-Wan. He already took on a thousand things at once, but without you to help bare the weight, it became a million. If he was busy, he didn’t have time to think -- about you, or how fucking fragile everything was, or about all the ways he could have saved you. You’d slipped through his fingers, even when he’d be holding on so tightly. It wasn’t his fault. It was just...life. 

A few weeks passed, and Obi-Wan continued to push himself. Everybody noticed it -- how suddenly busy he was, how quiet he’d become, how tired he looks. Blue eyes had grown exhausted with grief and regret, strawberry blonde hair becoming longer and unrulier than was characteristic for him. When you’d died, you’d taken a tiny piece of him with you. An important part. Maybe that part had been you. 

It was on a cold Tuesday evening that he heard the four words. Sat out on the balcony of his quarters, watching Coruscant and life pass by in a blur ahead of him, a tangle of traffic and noise and a million sounds that he couldn’t quite decipher. The sky was a navy blue, cast with the tiny little glints and dots of distant planets. All worlds that you’d once promised to explore 

‘You look like shit.’  

He thought he’d imagined it at first. In fact, it wouldn’t have been the first time in the last few weeks that the sound of your voice in his head had felt clear enough to be real. Imagining things - hallucinations and echoes of the long gone - was simply part of the grieving process. A process he’d gone through countless times before. 

 The sudden appearance of you in the corner of his eye jolted him like an electric shock. Perhaps not that far off of the emotional equivalent of being hit by a bus. Or a light freighter. Or...all of those things at once. 

You were ethereal. When he’d last seen you, you’d been...tired. Now, you were smiling and radiating some sort of energy that could only be described as quintessentially you. There was not a chance in hell that a grief-induced hallucination could be so life-like, so crystal clear. Plus, why would he have imagined you like this, slightly transparent and with a blue glow surrounding you? A fitting colour for your final form, he figured. 

‘Shocked to see me?’ Your drawl continued. ‘Because if you think you’re shocked, let me tell you. One second I was napping and the next I was a fucking Force ghost. Could you imagine?’

Obi-Wan smiled softly. ‘I don’t think I could.’

‘I can float through walls, though.’ You grinned. ‘How cool is that?’

‘It’s...that’s very cool.’ He replied. ‘I don’t suppose you can hug Force ghosts?’

Obi-Wan reached his palm out towards you - slowly but surely, as though he were scared you were going to fade away all over again if he touched you. You mimicked his actions, faded blue fingertips just moments away from his. When they finally touched, they didn’t. You felt nothing. He felt a rush of cold, as though somebody had poured a bucket of cold water over him.

He didn’t fully understand the concept of Force ghosts. Studied them, sure. Understood them? Not quite. There weren’t enough Jedi texts in the galaxy to fully capture the complexity of what made somebody come back. Often, they were linked to acts of heroism, or stemming from action taken when the person was still alive. That didn’t seem like you though. You weren’t the sort of person to try to fiddle with jinxes and hijinkery that would allow you to come back once you were dead - at least not purposefully. There was certainly every chance you did it accidentally. 

 ‘Guess not.’ You murmured. ‘Sorry ‘bout that.’

The icy feeling only grew closer as you took a seat beside him. It was funny, because he thought that if he’d had the chance to reunite with you, that it would have been more emotional than this. Something filled with more feeling and grandeur. Instead, you’d just appeared, and acted as though you’d never been gone in the first place. Obi-Wan preferred it that way. 

‘I’ve missed you.’ He continued to stare blankly ahead. 

When you died, there were a thousand things he’d come up with that he’d wished he’d said. They ranged from comments about the weather to grand declarations of...how much you meant to him. All things he would never dare say to your face, and that’s probably why he came up with them. Because he would never get the chance to say them. And now, here you were, right beside him, and he had a second opportunity to get that closure -- but the words didn’t quite come. They stayed on the tip of his tongue, there, but not quite there. Even if this wasn’t quite the version of you that he imagined himself telling them to, it was still undeniably you. 

‘I should hope so.’ You tried to nudge him with your elbow, but it was just another icy jab. ‘I would say that I missed you too, but I don’t know where I’ve been.’

‘What happened between then and now?’ Obi asked. ‘Between that and this?’

‘Okay, first of all - you can say my death. Coming up with a thousand other words for it won’t undo it.’ You said. ‘And...I don’t know. I just remember blaster fire, then some darkness, and then I was here.’

‘Did it hurt?’

‘Well it didn’t tickle.’ You replied ‘It was quick, if that’s any comfort.’

‘I suppose it is.’ He murmured. 

‘You’re being uncharacteristically quiet.’ You observed. ‘I can go away if you want. I’m not sure how this whole thing works but if you want me to leave, I can go and scare Dex-’

‘- that’s the last thing I want.’ He cut you off. ‘I just..I’ve spent the last few weeks trying not to acknowledge that you’re truly gone and it’s a little hard to do that when you’re quite literally a ghost.’

‘I’m not really gone though, am I?’ You said. ‘I’m still here. Not as I’d like to be, but I’m here.’

‘So as long as you’re around to irritate me and make snide comments, you’re here.’ He smiled. ‘Whether that’s in the flesh or...in the blue.’

‘I’m sorry it happened.’ You gently sighed. ‘Not sorry that I died for the greater good but sorry it was so..sudden.’

‘It’s not your fault.’ He wanted to reach across, to take your hand in his or run it down your arm - but he couldn’t. He couldn’t deal with another rush of cold in place of what used to be warm flesh. ‘It was still undeniably your most half-witted decision to date but you saved a lot of people, so I won’t hold it against you.’

‘Oh, how kind.’ You snorted. ‘I bet you’ve secretly enjoyed the peace and quiet, Kenobi.’

‘I miss it already.’

-- 

Obi-Wan woke up the next morning, still on the balcony. The air was cold -- as evidenced by his violent shivers -- and the sky had changed from navy, to a turquoise-tainted pink. The city below was moderately quiet, signalling that it was still pretty early. The only sounds were coming from traffic in the distance and the occasional whoosh of a passing jet in the sky above. He stayed like that for a moment, azure eyes clouded with some kind of apprehension as he watched the clouds slowly pass, not a care in the world for the fact it was fucking freezing. 

Last night had been real, even if there was no sign of your presence. Actually, that wasn’t quite true -- the robes he’d discarded before your appearance had been thrown over him like a blanket. They did little to protect him from the cold air, but it was a confirmation that you had been there. He wasn’t sure when you’d left - or how - but he was the only one on the balcony. 

There were a lot of questions floating about in his head. Why were you only turning up now after weeks? Why had you materialised by him? Why were you here at all? You were finally free, free to do literally whatever you wanted, and you’d wound up by his side. There were millions and millions of places in the galaxy and somehow, his balcony was the one where you’d wanted to be. 

After showering and shaving, Obi-Wan found himself heading towards the classroom of the best Jedi he knew: Yoda. If anyone was going to know anything about Force ghosts, it was him. He’d have to make sure not to let slip exactly what he was talking about - your relationship with him was far more attached than the code allowed, after all - in a more general sense, he must have had something to offer. It wasn’t the kind of thing they taught in Jedi training. If anything, it was the opposite. The lesson was don’t become attached enough to someone so that they haunt you! - and it was one at which he’d failed quite miserably. 

‘Master Kenobi.’ Yoda sat in the middle of the classroom, meditating. He didn’t have to open his eyes to know who it was. ‘Of assistance, may I be?’

‘Good morning.’ Obi-Wan greeted him with a bow. ‘I have some questions, and I was hoping you might be able to help me.’

‘Do go on. Help, I might be able to.’

‘Right.’ He cleared his throat, awkwardly taking a seat beside him. ‘What do you know about Force ghosts?’

‘Lots. Specific, you must be.’

‘Say you had a dear friend, and they died.’ He began. ‘Then they came back a little while as a Force ghost.’

‘Come back, they don’t.’ Yoda opened one eye, glancing over at him. ‘Never gone, they were. The Force takes time to manifest.’ 

‘So...the ghost version of them is still them?’

‘Very much so.’ He said. ‘Why, there are many reasons. Many Jedi study for a long time to materialise as ghosts after passing.’

‘What if they didn’t?’

‘Then unfinished business, they have.’ He replied. ‘When a Jedi dies, their Force connections do too. If they are left unbroken, exist as a ghost they will.’

Well, that explained it. 

‘Right.’ He murmured. ‘Last question, I promise - how long does that connection usually last?’

‘Months to years, it may be.’ He explained. ‘On their unfinished business, the connection depends.’

‘That makes sense.’ Obi-Wan nodded. ‘Thank you, Master Yoda.’

The little green creature simply nodded in response, turning his attention back to his meditation. He didn’t ask questions -- what was the point? He’d been around hundreds of years, and dealt with hundreds of similar things in that time. Truth be told, he didn’t have all the answers. He was just good at acting like it. 

Obi-Wan pondered on the conversation for the rest of the day. 

 There were a lot of things that could have constituted your unfinished business. The list was endless, especially given how suddenly you’d passed. Nobody knew you better than Obi-Wan, but even he struggled to decipher it. You weren’t the sort of person who would hang around for no good reason. It had to be something important -- something so pressing that you quite literally couldn’t pass away in its entirety without dealing with it. Part of him was worried that he didn’t know at all; you were always sneaking about, always doing something that you shouldn’t have been. That left a long list of possibilities. 

But Yoda had directly mentioned Force connections, right? Maybe he’d meant it in a general way, but Obi would have been a complete dumb-ass to think that the Jedi didn’t know what was going on. If the situation didn’t tell him, his seeming ability to know everything about everyone certainly would have. You were the only person he could have possibly been talking about. 

It was something he knew he had to bring up, and so he made the mental promise to himself. The best time would have been that night, when he saw you again. If he saw you again. He trusted you to return. You knew better now than to disappear forever without saying goodbye. 

And he’d been right. That evening, after he’d exchanged goodbyes with Anakin, Obi-Wan found himself wandering out to the balcony. Sure enough, you were leant against the railings, back turned to him as you peered down at the city below. The air was cold again -- maybe because it was Winter, but also maybe because of you -- and the harsh winds blew back your hair. He wanted to reach out and feel it, to feel you, but he couldn’t. A man whose love language was physical touch was sure to suffer when the person he wanted most was a fucking entity.  

‘You’re late.’ You glanced over your shoulder at him. ‘Don’t your meetings normally end at six?’

‘Anakin wanted to talk about something.’ He replied. ‘So is this your life now? Waiting for me to come home?’

You snorted. ‘Don’t flatter yourself. I’ve been at the diner all day moving stuff around to confuse Dex.’

‘That’s mean.’

‘And what would you do if you were a Force ghost?’

Wait for you. Follow you.

‘Explore.’ He lied, leaning against the balcony beside you. ‘I spoke to Yoda today about...this.’ 

‘Mmm?’ 

‘He said that people who usually come back either purposefully prepared for it when they were still alive.’

‘Or?’

‘How do you know there’s an or?’

‘Because I sometimes struggled to turn on my lightsaber. You think I’m skilled enough to do this shit on purpose, Kenobi?’

‘You’re…’ brilliantly intelligent, easily the smartest person I know, ‘...clever. Don’t put yourself down.’

‘Just cut to the point.’

‘Right.’ Obi-Wan cleared his throat. ‘He said that, or that they had unfinished business. Force connections still strong enough to keep them here.’

‘So, you and me?’

‘What?’

‘Our Force connection.’ You said it as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. ‘You do know what we have one, right?’

‘I...I figured we were always just...close.’ 

‘No, you dipshit.’ You shook your head with a laugh. ‘They can develop between best friends. It’s a little rare, but we’re both so strong with the Force that it just happens naturally.’ 

‘That makes sense.’ he turned to look out at the city. ‘I didn’t really have a best friend before you.’ 

You looked over at him, a smile playing on your lips. ‘Yeah, me neither.’

--

Obi-Wan quickly fell into a routine, post-you. Not post-you completely, because he still saw you every evening, but that had helped push him towards the transition. He adjusted to only seeing you after work - not in the mornings or during the day or every waking second like it used to be. Nothing was how it used to be. Not even close. You were no longer beside him during meets or climbing into bed next to him when you had nightmares. There were no more missions with you or late nights filled with paperwork and laughter. 

That was the problem. 

You were here, but you weren’t really. The ghost he saw every night had your eyes and your laugh and your personality, but it wasn’t really you. Obi-Wan couldn’t touch you; he couldn’t feel you in the same way he used to. It was like having a conversation with a figment of his imagination -- conversations of false hope and plans that would never come to fruition. Because you could banter and you could laugh and you act like things weren’t completely fucking different, but they were. You were a ghost. A ghost of yourself, a ghost of the past, a ghost of what used to be. 

It had helped the pain at first. Eased the dread of knowing that you weren’t ever going to be back, not properly. Obi-Wan had appreciated that. It made grieving a lot easier when you were technically still there to tease and jester him through the process. Knowing that his friendship was the reason you couldn’t fully let go of existing had both made it better and worse. Better, because it meant you cared for him as deeply as he did for you. Worse, because it was so open-ended. At what point would you be satisfied enough to finally let go? Would he get to say goodbye, or would you just be here forever? 

That was the problem, Obi-Wan had come to find. 

He was hopelessly in love with you - though that much was obvious - and he couldn’t deal with only having some of you. He wanted all of you, or he wanted none of you. Only being able to talk to a blue apparition of you just wasn’t enough. It was just a constant reminder that the person he loved most in the universe was gone, and that he’d never fully have you. He was kicking himself for that one. What if he’d said something to you when you were still alive? Declared his love for when he could still physically reach out to you? 

That was the thought plaguing his mind every night. With you beside him, a cold aura radiating towards him as you sat with your legs hugged to your chest. It had been a few weeks since your first appearance, and your nights together ranged from deep conversations to comfortable silence. The latter was always worse, because Obi-Wan constantly found himself teetering on the edge of saying something. It was hard, because despite everything, he found you to be more enchanting and peaceful than ever. More entrancing. 

‘Can I tell you something?’ He asked. 

‘Sure thing.’ You peered over at him. ‘You look worried. Is it serious?’

He paused for a moment. ‘Depends how you take it, I suppose.’

‘Try me.’

‘There are…’ he faltered again. ‘There are some things I regret not telling you when you were still here.’

‘I am here.’ You reminded him. 

‘No, I know that.’ He found himself unable to look at you. ‘I mean when you were here here.’

‘What’s the difference, Obi?’

‘Remember when you used to come to my bedroom at 2AM because you’d had a bad dream?’ He asked. ‘Or when you’d throw yourself into my arms after we’d been separated on long missions?’

‘Yeah.’ 

He absent-mindedly reached a hand out towards you; it went straight through you, a rush of cold shooting down his arm. ‘I can’t do that anymore.’

‘You can still talk to me.’ You urged. ‘You can still be with me-’

‘- not in the way I want.’ Not in the way I need.

‘What do you mean?’ You gently pushed.

‘You don’t need me to explain it.’ He finally looked at you, blue eyes shrouded with an emotion you couldn’t quite decipher. 

‘Obi-Wan, what do you think has been keeping me here?’ You asked. 

You knew. Of course you fucking knew. Try as he might to be mysterious and suave, but you could read him like a book -- and it was a shock to you that he hadn’t seen your feelings either. They were clear as day to both of you, and yet it had been easier to ignore them for the sake of your friendship, and for the sake of the code. You both always figured that you could deal with them at a later date, because that’s when you’d had a later. 

‘Just say it.’ You murmured. ‘Say that you love me too and I’ll go-’

‘- I don’t want you to go.’ He cut you off. ‘Because then you’re gone forever.’

‘And then you can move on.’ You smiled. Neither of you knew that ghosts could cry until now. 

This was the closest he would ever get to having you now. He could have just sucked it up and dealt with it, and kept you by his side in your ominous form - but would that have been fair on you? To keep you around, just because he was so full of regret over things unsaid and so full of fear over grieving? None of this was fair, on him or on you.  

‘I can’t say it.’ Obi-Wan murmured. ‘Not yet.’

‘It’s okay.’ You gave him a watery smile. ‘I know.’

Neither of you said anything else - maybe you didn’t want to, or maybe you were scared to. The fact you’d finally acknowledged the bantha in the room after years, finally admitting that love had been the driving force behind what made your friendship so good, for so long. The irony was that when you’d died, he’d wanted nothing more than for you to come back in some form. Now, he realised that it was holding him back from moving on -- and he couldn’t do that until he’d let you go. But he couldn’t do that either. 

Unbeknownst to Obi-Wan, his words had been a confession. Albeit a thinly veiled one, but a confession nonetheless. It had confirmed to you the only thing you’d wanted to know before you’d passed: that he loved you back. That was all you needed. It was all you’d ever needed. 

Eventually, the Jedi beside you grew sleepy. That’s how it usually went every night -- you’d talk, he’d fall asleep beside you, and you’d cover him with a blanket and slip out to wherever it was that Force ghosts went at night. He never asked, for fear of it ruining the mystery. Obi-Wan knew that he wasn’t the only person you saw, but it was a nice thought, and one he didn’t want to taint. At least you took more mercy on him than you did with Dex, who slowly thought he was going insane at all the random objects suddenly being moved around. 

When you heard him gently snoring, you stood up. Obi-Wan looked peaceful, as though he’d finally gotten something of his chest - even though he hadn’t realised he’d done it. He hadn’t realised that it had been enough.  

You leant down beside him, pressing a soft kiss to his lips. For the first time since you’d appeared, you could finally feel his skin against yours - no cold jolts, no body parts suddenly disappearing through the other. Just your lips against his; warm and...human. 

‘Good night, Obi-Wan.’ You ran a hand through his hair, before standing up and stepping back. ‘I love you. I’ll always love you.’

He felt it. He was asleep, but he felt your lips on his and your hand in his hair, and he’d secretly smiled to himself, not entirely realising what was going on. He’d thought it was a dream, or that he was simply imagining that you could finally touch him as though you were a human, and no longer a cold, blue ghost. 

Because you weren’t. You were no longer a ghost.

Obi-Wan didn’t realise till he rose the next morning, a blanket tossed over him and the feeling of your lips still lingering on his, even hours later. He even dared to smile for a moment, before the knowledge of what he’d done hit him. He’d given you what you wanted - an unintentional confession of love. The thing you needed to finally cut off your Force connection. The only thing still tethering you to this world.

You were gone, but at least he’d finally gotten what he wanted. You. Even if it was only for a few moments.

[captainkappa]

Fanfic:: Out of Reach

“Soulmates” has become the equivalent of “love at first sight” across the galaxy. Lock eyes with someone, hold out a bare hand for a greeting, it’s as simple as that. .

But Din doesn’t think about any of that as he stares at the black-robed Jedi in front of him. 

Or "The 5 Times Din and Luke Didn't Touch Skin-to-Skin and the 1 Time They Did'

Day 1 of @dinlukenation‘s Dinluke week! My very first soulmate AU ever!

A HUGE thanks to @notsosweet16 for betaing!

AO3 Link

-=-=-=-

1.

“Soulmates” has become the equivalent of “love at first sight” across the galaxy. Lock eyes with someone, hold out a bare hand for a greeting, it’s as simple as that. People’s hands are covered in tattoos where they first made contact with their soulmate, romantic or otherwise. Wearing gloves has become something of a statement, limiting your ability to easily find your soulmate.

But Din doesn’t think about any of that as he stares at the black-robed Jedi in front of him. He doesn’t think about soulmates, or his Creed, or anything of the sort. He just thinks about Grogu, how he wants him to see his face clearly before he has to go with his people.

And so, he takes off his helmet, finally able to look at Grogu without the filter of the T-visor.

Din can’t imagine handing Grogu over, can’t imagine physically being responsible for this separation. He sets Grogu on the floor, lets him toddle to safety, something Din could never provide.

He doesn’t remember how he got back on Boba’s ship. His helmet is still off but he has the vague notion that no one saw him.

Not that it matters.

He comes out of the fog when his body cries for it, so he drags himself out of the cot and to the fresher, cognizant enough to be thankful no one else is in this part of the ship.

He takes care of his business and is faced with his reflection in the mirror. He realizes then that he should’ve kept his gaze to the sink, but now that he’s looking, he can’t tear his gaze away.

Puffy, red rimmed eyes meet his, brown curls matted to one side where he’d been laying down, but he can’t pull his eyes away to the small flower tattoo on his cheek. Din doesn’t know a damn thing about flowers, but it’s small and green, with a million little petals surrounding the center.

It’s right where Grogu touched him.

As if he didn’t know already, as if he needed magic ink to tell him what he knew in his heart of hearts from that first moment he held out a finger to the child.

He stays there until his legs burn and the tears come back. He’s glad no one is there to watch him.

2.

Din is slumping in his seat, one of the first things they beat out of foundlings before they earned their armor. Beskar is sacred, it demands a straight spine and discipline when wearing it.

He couldn’t think of a better way to make his displeasure known for this political party Bo-Katan is dragging him to than to slump in his seat on the ride there. Especially in this gold-plated nonsense Bo-Katan pulled out once they’d taken back Sundari. This armor isn’t his, it’s a shell that other Mandos are shoved in, a shell Din never asked for.

Bo-Katan turns around in her seat to face him, a scowl on her face. She almost looks as displeased with the situation as Din does.

“You’re acting like a child,” she says.

“Then fight me.” He holds the darksaber loosely in his hand, dangerously close to dropping it.

“I’m not about to kick a man when he’s already down. Pull yourself together and I’ll challenge you.” She turns back, eyes to the swirl of hyperspace. “We’re nearly there, pull yourself together.”

That’s been the majority of their interactions for the past few months. Bo-Katan refuses to take the saber back unless it’s a fair fight and he can’t bring himself to care. What’s left is a lot of tight silences. While Din still finds that taking back Mandalore is a fool’s errand, he can at least admit that kicking Imp ass feels cathartic.

But the weight in his chest comes back when he takes off his helmet in the borrowed room on the cruiser. Then he feels like he has all the time to consider never putting his helmet on again, leaving him to stare at the reflection, at that small bundle of petals on his cheek.

Din only has four other soulmate tattoos; two from his parents, one from the Armorer, and one from Paz. He’s seen people in the galaxy with thousands, covering their entire bodies. It’s in these moments he decides to keep the helmet on, if only to hold this small part to himself, to keep it as secret as possible.

Today, Bo-Katan needs him as the figurehead for some New Republic party. Din wanted to tune out the plans, but Koska’s infernal tapping prevented that. The whole point of this was to make a strong showing in order to prove that Mandalore was strong enough to not join the New Republic. That political meeting wouldn’t take place for a month, but Din still had to go to this stupid party.

They exit hyperspace to see Chandrilla, a bright spot in the sights. They bring the small vessel to where they’re directed, landing in amongst a hundred other ships with senators of all races disembarking. Din clips the darksaber to his belt and heaves himself up, following after Bo-Katan with Wolves at his back.

He tunes out of the security check, with Kryze firmly stating that “the Mand’alor” would not be without his darksaber. Din wants to shove the offending thing in the security guard’s direction, let it get lost, let the responsibility fall from his shoulders.

But the security guard bends to Kryze’s will and the darksaber remains firmly at his side as they enter the paty, descending a short staircase to the main area.

It’s not as opulent as Din expected, he’s crashed fancier when bringing in bounties. He can hear Bo-Katan whisper to Wolves about how different it would’ve been on Mandalore in its prime, with matching tables and tablecloths, with crystals all of the same matching set. Din tunes out the conversation to look for the quietest place to hunker down and wait for the night to end. The area is entirely open, tall windows letting in light from the setting sun, illuminating where senators mingle and where tables are set up for dinner later.

He continues his scan of the room but stops as his eyes lock with a man across the room, a man with dirty blond hair, wearing all black robes.

Din barely realizes he’s walking until he is face to face with the man.

He can barely keep the fury out of his voice when he asks, “Where’s Grogu?”

The man, who looked calm before, now looks at him with raised eyebrows. “I- You changed your armor.”

That… isn’t the response he had been expecting, but it still doesn’t answer his question.

“You said Grogu would be safe with you. Where is he?”

He steps forward, forcing the Jedi to step back, but he’s not scared like most people are when he does that.

“He is safe! I couldn’t get out of attending so I got Chewie to babysit! I’ll be back as soon as I can. Sometimes I’m forced to come to New Republic meetings, but I have systems in place.” The Jedi looks him dead in the eyes, an impressive feat considering the helmet. “I give you my word that your son is safe.”

The sincerity grips Din to his core and before he can say anything in response, Bo-Katan has finally caught up to him and is dragging him away.

She brings him to an alcove that he’s already decided will be where he spends the rest of the party. She thrusts a finger in his face. He doesn’t flinch.

“I didn’t mind you doing your own thing at this party because I thought you wouldn’t do anything,” she hisses. “I didn’t expect you to yell at the last karking Jedi in the galaxy! Don’t do that again!”

“Whatever you say, princess.”

The look on her face is one of the best things he’s seen recently. He makes a mental note to thank Fett for teaching him that insult.

The rest of the party passes in a blur. Din stays where he is, just watching from the shadows. Sometimes he catches sight of the Jedi, who seems to have made it his mission to talk to everyone. He cuts an imposing figure still, even when not in combat, in all black robes flowing behind him. Dinner is served and Din stays in place, knowing there are ration bars on the ship.

He sees the Jedi laugh at something a woman in white says, his head tilted back, and he looks the most human he has all night. Din turns back to watching the two Nite Owls.

Finally, Bo-Katan signals that the night is over. He leaves his spot and joins them. They’re halfway up the steps when a voice calls out to them.

He turns to find the Jedi, face slightly flushed, a step or so below them.

“Manda’lor, I apologize for how the night started. I wish to make steps in order to make up for that in the future, if you’ll allow it,” he said, holding a gloved hand out.

He could feel the heat of Bo-Katan’s stare on the back of his neck.

“Okay,” he says, shaking his hand.

That’s why he hears the scrape of flimsi against the leather of his gloves. He pulls back his hand, palming the paper to look at later. The Jedi nods and wishes them a safe flight.

It’s only when he’s safe in his room on the cruiser does he look at the paper the Jedi slipped him.

It’s a set of coordinates and a note.

The Jedi school needs to be kept a secret to ensure the safety of the padawans. I’ll be back on the surface in two standard days. I hope this is okay as a first step.

-Luke Skywalker

3.

He leaves for Yavin as soon as he can. Bo-Katan doesn’t question him, just lets him take one of the ships from the cruiser with the promise that he will come back when he’s of right mind to fight her for the darksaber.

It’s the first time they’ve agreed on anything. He leaves the gold-plated beskar in the borrowed room and leaves, feeling more like himself than he has in a while.

As he powers up the hyperdrive, the same phrase burns its way through his skull.

I’m going to see Grogu again.

A restless few hours in hyperspace later, he arrives on Yavin IV in the early morning. He picks up a hail and it’s Skywalker, who leads him through where to land.

He lands near one of the tall structures that poke out of the tree line. The ramp of the ship lowers, but when he sees Grogu, held in the arms of the Jedi, it’s not soon enough. He leaps off the ship, landing in a way that his knees will protest later, but he can’t help himself. His son is there, wiggling out of the Jedi’s grip so he can run up and meet him in the middle.

Din scoops his child up and holds him close, pressing his forehead to his. Grogu babbles nonsense and it’s the most beautiful noise he’s heard.

When his heart stops racing, he looks up and realizes that Skywalker is surrounded by five other kids, a human, a Miraluka, a Wookie, and two Twi’leks.

His gaze finds Luke’s again.

He clears his throat. “Thank you.”

Skywalker gives him an easy smile and says, “Let me show you around.”

He gets the tour of the temple, often interrupted by the curious questions of the children who have latched onto him. At the end, Luke shuffles everyone off to dinner, but holds Din back for a moment, a hand on his elbow, fingers finding the spaces between his armor.

“This isn’t a one-time thing,” Luke says. “You’re welcome back to the school whenever you want. I just ask that you don’t interrupt Grogu’s lessons and you keep the school a secret.”

And with that, Din falls into a routine.

He starts taking bounties again, something Greef is all the more happy for even if he sticks to small ones that won’t take months to bring in. He visits the school at least once a month, circling the planet if need be, to make sure he doesn’t land during lessons. He’s thankful for any time he gets with Grogu, before or after lessons.

It’s in the times in-between where he finds himself surprisingly restless. Luke said to consider himself a guest, but his body itches for action. Yavin is a peaceful planet, so instead of action, he finds projects for himself.

First are the lights in the basement. Then a side door that hesitates a second too long before opening. Luke tries to dissuade him from working, but Din’s stalwart. The next time Din comes for a visit, Luke shows him the list of updates he wanted to do, which he had made when he first moved in, again reassuring Din that he doesn’t need to do anything with it.

Din takes it gladly.

He’s working on the overhead fan in the kitchen - it gets stuck on the highest setting - when Luke’s droid bumps the back of his leg. Luke has introduced it to him, but the name escapes him. He doesn’t find himself recoiling from droids anymore, but he still prefers to put distance between droids and himself and Grogu.

He glances down at the shiny blue and white astromech. “What?”

The droid spins in a circle, beeping loudly.

“What? Do you want a damn cookie?”

The droid spins in a more furious circle and finally, he sees the problem.

“Oh, your wheel is stuck.”

The droid lets out a beep that sounds exasperated, but he can’t be sure.

“Well, why are you telling me? Go tell Skywalker.”

The droid makes a bunch more beeping noises and moves toward the window. Din, at a loss for what else to do, followed. He sees Luke in the courtyard with the padawans. They’re sitting in a circle, legs crossed, eyes closed. Even at this distance, Din can see how peaceful Luke looks, how the lines smooth from his face, lines someone Luke’s age shouldn’t have yet.

He looks down at the droid that’s moving in a semi-circle, back and forth. He thinks it’s trying to look cute.

“Alright. Lemme see it.”

It’s an awkward dance to get the droid to prop up its leg. He imagines Luke must have a space set up for this very thing, but his tools are already here and he’s not about to go poking where Luke hasn’t already told him he could go.

It’s where Luke and the foundlings find him when they come in for lessons, Din hunched over the astromech, quietly bitching back as it beeps in apparent distress.

“I’m almost done!” Din exclaims, holding the last two wires in his hand. “Do you want me to stop here? Your movement would be even more limited.”

“Are you two having fun?” Luke asks, snapping Din out of his reverie.

He turns to face a smirking Luke, glad the helmet hides the warmth inexplicably climbing up his face.

“This thing demanded I fix his leg.” He taps the leg in question, which gets Artoo’s head spinning.

Luke snorts but puts on the same face he gives his students when they’ve done something bad. “That’s not very nice, Artoo, he was just trying to help!”

Artoo shakes its head, which might be an apology? Din can’t tell because then Luke is squatting down in front of him, a hand on Din’s knee for balance.

“If he’s not going to thank you, I will. You didn’t have to.”

And Din realizes he didn’t. It had never occurred to him not to do this for Artoo, for Luke.

“You were busy, and this piece of shit wasn’t letting up.”

That definitely gets him an angry beep from Artoo, but Luke just smiles.

“He’s definitely thankful,” he says with a smile that seems to come easy to him.

Din, not knowing what to say in response, just nods and finishes soldering the last wires in place. With the hatch in place, Artoo straightens up and gives them a turn around the kitchen. He then gives a series of loud beeps as he turns in a tight circle.

“Yes, you look very nice,” Luke says to the droid, who bumps his leg in affirmation. Luke continues, “Well, while I’m here, do you want a tune up, buddy?”

The droid spins his head in an affirmative and Luke chuckles.

“Alright, let’s go down to my workshop.”

Luke takes a couple of steps before turning back.

“Coming?”

Din looks up from where he was putting his tools away. “Do… you want me here?”

“Of course! Besides, you know what they say, four hands are better than two.”

“I’ve never heard that before.”

“You’ve never met a besalisk before then.”

Din just shakes his head, an amused smile on his face that he knows Luke can’t see, but he packs up his tools and follows Luke to the workshop, which is easily the messiest place in the temple. Parts are strewn everywhere, there are tables but they merely serve as a means to hold more stuff, but Luke walks in like it’s home, throwing his robe over a chair, shoulders relaxing with the movement.

Artoo wheels over to a spot against the wall, and Din quickly realizes the platform elevates for better access on the droid. The tools float over and with a jerk of Luke’s head, he beckons Din over.

He settles in on the other side of Artoo, wordlessly putting his tools with Luke’s between them. He lets Luke open the main access panel and already, the astromech is beeping up a storm.

“What’s he saying?”

Luke doesn’t look up from his work, pulling out the necessary parts and handing some over to Din.

“Artoo is bitching about the last time I did this for him. No, it was not on Hoth.” He lightly smacks the droid’s recently fixed leg.

Din can’t help the way his head tilts. “Why would you ever go to Hoth?”

“It was a Rebel base for a while.”

And Luke launches into a story about the initial days at that base, jumping into the snow just to jump in the hot springs. That turns into his story taking down an AT-AT by himself. He can tell Luke is skipping over parts based on when he pauses, but Din doesn’t mind the censorship. Din even finds himself recounting the events of Sorgan. He finds himself startlingly content like this, passing tools to one another, swapping stories, a mouthy droid between them.

4.

Din can’t find Luke anywhere, but he’s not about to panic just yet.

The last time he has seen Luke was when they were trading off kids. Since the list of repairs has gotten shorter and shorter, he helps with the children. Luke has never asked for his help, but the grateful look is evident to Din when he arrives to take the foundlings off his hands. Din is in charge of the kids after lessons, giving Luke the break he desperately needs before dinner.  On some days, Din has to leave a heated plate outside of Luke’s door, the Jedi already passed out from a long day.

And so, with Artoo on reluctant-babysitter duty, Din wanders the halls of the temple, checking in all the usual places; the workshop, the study, the meditation room, and the man’s personal room.

It’s only when he walks outside the temple and looks up does he find Luke, a dark spot on the levels of the temple. He didn’t even know there was a way to get onto them.

So, he powers on his jetpack and takes a short flight up. Luke glances at him for a moment before he looks back to the horizon. Din swallows, noticing how the robe falls off his shoulder, revealing a brown tunic, the collar being pulled down with the weight of the robe, revealing freckled skin.

“You missed dinner,” he says, by way of greeting.

“Ah, sorry. I was cleaning after the kids and looked up and… have you seen anything like it?”

Din looks at the horizon and he really tries, but it looks most of the same as most sunsets he’s seen on moons like Yavin IV; varying shades of red petering off into soft clouds.

He sits down, leaving plenty of space between him and Luke, to try and see if being at his level will give him the same experience. It doesn’t

Before he can give an appropriate answer, Luke whips his head around and stares at him, really scrutinizing him. Din is struck dumb for a moment, unaware as to why he’s under such a microscope.

Finally, Luke speaks up. “How well can you see the colors?”

“Not terribly well.” When was the last time he looked at a sunset without the helmet? Sorgan, all those months ago?

Luke considers him again before pulling at the cloth belt at his waist. Before Din can realize what he’s doing, the cloth is around his eyes, firmly tied in place.

“Here. This okay?” Luke asks.

Din is struck dumb for another moment. Luke had just been waxing about how beautiful the sunset was and now… was blinding himself so Din could see. Has anyone ever done that for him? Din can’t remember.

“Um… how well can you see?”

“I see a little bit of the sky, but that’s it. Dark as night in here.”

Din holds up three fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“One,” he says with a smile like he’s told a joke.

“Okay… okay.” Din takes a shaky breath before undoing the clasp and removing his helmet, putting it to the side.

Immediately, the world is bathed in a soft red. He looks to the horizon and his breath catches in his throat. The sun is low in the sky, surrounded by a deep orange that fades into red. The clouds, as few of them that there are, look like they’re on fire. He shifts closer to Luke, just enough so the glare of the sun against his ship (his ship, that he bought with his own money, no longer relying on Bo-Katan’s charity) is no longer in his eyes.

Luke must correctly interpret his silence for awe.

“Right?” Luke says, happiness clear in his voice. “But I’ll be honest, no sunset can match a binary sunset on Tatooine.”        

“You’re from Tatooine?”

“Yeah, 19 miserable years under those suns. ‘Course now… I think a lot differently about that time.”

And just like that, Luke is talking about shooting womp rats and all the things he and his friends did to fight off the boredom. He touches on the excitement when his friends were getting their soulmate tattoos, the games they’d play to touch and see. His hands fly about as he does so and Din can detect a hint of a twang in his voice the more he talks about his past. He also catches how his voice pauses when he talks about his aunt and uncle who raised him, but he doesn’t press.

His hands settle as Din finds himself talking about his youth in the Fighting Corps, the mischief he and his siblings would get into, even when they should have been too tired to move.

Din looks down and sees that the tips of Luke’s fingers are touching his own. He can’t tell if it’s on purpose or not, so he leaves his hand there.

By the time the other moons are visible, the two of them are still up there.

5.

Maybe it’s a bad idea to take a high-profile bounty right after losing the darksaber to Bo-Katan, but Din is feeling on top of the world, so he decides to act like it. As he nurses his wounds on his ship, it’s clear he’s rustier than he realized.

He delivers on the bounty though, he’s not that out of practice. Nonetheless, he ends up using more bacta on himself than he anticipated. That’s after realizing that the tube was expired by a couple of months, but he slips into old habits, using the spray anyway.

As much as Din planned on going straight to Yavin, he lingers in Nevarro, lingering in the market before buckling down and using his new found credits. He buys a pack of cookies for the foundlings, a plush bantha for Grogu, and he hesitates further before grabbing the leather gloves and slapping them on top of the pile.

Din spends most of the ride to Yavin IV wondering if he should forget the gloves or give them to Luke as intended. He doesn’t think about how his hand keeps finding his arm and rubbing at it.

He comms ahead to let Luke know he’s arriving so that when he touches down, Luke’s corralling the children to stand far enough back. Grogu is the first to escape, running up and not slowing down, but Din considers himself an expert at picking up his son, even when he’s holding things in his other hand. The children crowd around him and soon he’s divested of the cookies and plush. He can see the other man’s expression soften at the sight, and further soften when Din holds out the gloves.

“I… I thought of you when I saw them,” he says, suddenly nervous.

Luke takes them, bare hand feeling the smooth leather. He looks back up to Din.

“Thank you,” he says. His eyes slide down Din’s body, holding him in place until he stops.

He turns to the children around him. “Tayf, can you bring everyone inside for nap time?”

The Miraluka girl nods, corralling all of the smaller children into the Temple. The Wookie walks up and wordlessly holds out his hands for Grogu. Din gives him over easily, knowing how much Grogu loves his new friends. He goes to follow the kids, but a firm hand on his elbow stops him.

Leaning in close, Luke whispers, “Are you okay?”

“What?”

Luke balls up the sleeve of his robes and pressed on his arm. He looks up at him with intent in his eyes. “You’re bleeding.”

Din looks himself over and the movement causes pain to flare up on his arm and that’s when he remembers.

“I’m fine. The bacta I used had expired, but that’s it.”

Luke’s still looking at him with a steely gaze, but the grip on his elbow lessens.

“Can you… indulge me and let me help you out still? You should probably wash out the old bacta anyway.”

Din’s tongue suddenly feels much heavier. “But your students…”

“Can handle nap time by themselves. Please? If your Creed will allow it?”

Din accepts.

Luke keeps an arm on him the entire walk there and Din has reasons why that’s unnecessary on the tip of his tongue, that he’s survived far, far worse, that the wound is on his arm and not his hand, but he keeps his mouth shut. Luke steers him to a fresher that is out of the way enough that the kids won’t walk in on them.

Luke gestures for him to sit on the edge of the tub and once seated, looks much more nervous than he did outside.

“Um, if you need me to turn around or… something.”

“I can take off my armor while you grab the bacta?”

“Yes! Yes, that’s a good idea!”

Luke leaves. Alone, Din carefully pulls off and lays down the pauldron and vambrace on the ground next to him. He considers the flight suit before carefully rolling it up past the wound. It squeezes uncomfortably, but it’s better than stripping entirely or cutting the sleeve.

Luke returns with a small pile of things in his hands.

“This is maybe a little too much but,” the glove snaps against his skin and he hisses, “you never know.”

Din just nods, suddenly trying to remember the last person who took this much care with him.

The actual process of cleaning up and bandaging is quick. Not much blood was trickling out, so it was a routine process. That’s what Din tells himself as he hyperfocuses on the occasional drag of the glove on his skin, the tender way Luke’s fingers prod at the wound for signs of infection, how their faces seem so, so close right now.

But it’s a barely there feeling, and then Din is pulling the sleeve back into place and Luke is shucking off the latex.

“Thank you.”

Luke gives him a small smile. “Just make sure you restock before you leave. The temple’s stores are open to you.”

“I know.”

Luke turns to start dinner but pauses. “Thank you for the gloves by the way.”

“It’s nothing.”

“No, it’s not.”

The wound tingled for ages after Luke left, and Din was left to consider if it was because of the bacta working or Luke’s proximity. He brings up his other hand to trace the wound, to try and chase that lingering warmth.

 +1.

All of the famous soulmate stories involve the touch being a big climactic moment. Holos show the touch happening at the exact right or wrong time. Stars, even Han and Leia had that moment, shouting at each other in the Rebel base. According to Luke, everyone could recount where they were when the shouting suddenly stopped as they made contact.

Din and Luke don’t get a big moment. They get dishes.

The padawans are all asleep in their beds. Din is washing dishes and Luke is drying. Din’s gloves lie abandoned on the table. Din hands a bowl to Luke, their fingers brush with no thought-

And then it clicks.

The two of them whip their heads up to stare at each other, the bowl forgotten on the floor, shattered.

“Did that-?”

“Are we-?”

Din pulls his arm closer to him to confirm that yes, there’s now a small flower tattoo where their fingers brushed, bright, long golden petals drooping toward his palm.

He looks up and sees Luke checking the same with his hand.

Din tries to battle down the rising panic in his throat as he speaks, “I- It’s okay, this doesn’t have to be anything else than friendship.”

Luke looks up sharply. “What… what if I want it to be more?”

“But… attachments?”

“I’m attached to my sister whether I like it or not. I… I’m a grown ass man who can love without falling to the darkside. I’d be able to let you go, like now if you said you wanted to stay friends.”

Din feels dizzy as he admits, “I don’t want to just be friends.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

They hold eye contact and Din is suddenly aware of the space between them.

And how he doesn’t want there to be space between them.

He grasps Luke’s fingers, this time better appreciating the warmth in them. He feels Luke’s fingers flex against his and that just emboldens him to reach up with his other hand and cup the other man’s face. He can more so feel rather than hear how Luke’s voice hitches, feels the warmth of his cheeks as they flare red.

“Can I… do something?”

“Sure,” Luke says, a touch breathless.

Din lets go of Luke’s jaw and brings his hand around. He tangles his fingers in Luke’s hair, sighing at the softens, at the knots he runs into, made from being out all day with the kids.

He tilts Luke’s head forward, bringing his head forward as well, until their foreheads meet. Luke closes his eyes with the movement and Din is just happy to stand here.

He whispers, “This is called a keldabe kiss.”

Still with eyes closed, Luke smiles. “I like it.”

Din does too.

[25centsoda]

Luke & Vader-ish One-Shot

Idek what to title this, I literally just wrote it and am now shoving it out into the world, no editing. Backstory uh Luke and Wedge (several months post-Bespin) got sent by the Rebellion to pick up some weapons from a semi-shady weapons dealer.

“Weapons are back here,” the woman said gruffly, shuffling into the back room. Luke and Wedge exchanged a look, and followed. “One at a time,” she said, putting a hand to Wedge’s chest to keep him out.

“Are you serious?” Wedge asked.

The woman squinted at him, a mean light in her eyes. “You wanna test me, boy? One at a time back here, or no deal. It’s close quarters, don’t want to risk any hotshot pilots knocking into something and blowing the whole place up.”

“Fine, fine,” Wedge said, hands up in surrender. Luke watched him until the door closed with a bang, cutting off his view.

He turned around, but the door clicked behind him, locked.

“Hey, what’s that f--” he said, cut off by a sudden need to dodge a blaster bolt. It hummed past his face, blue - set to stun. “What the hell?”

“I know who you are, Skywalker,” the woman spat, eyes alight with hunger. “You’ve got a bounty on your head that could buy a small planet.”

Luke drew on the Force, watching the woman cautiously. Imbuing his voice with conviction, he said, “You don’t want to turn me in.”

“I don’t want to…” she repeated dreamily, then shook herself and fired again. Luke dodged at the last moment only by the grace of the Force. “You really are a Jedi, huh? Guess I’ll get to use my toys, then.”

Luke only had a moment for his stomach to sink in dread before the Force screamed at him to move again. A small metal ball brushed his arm as it flew past. The moment it landed on the floor it exploded into a cloud of gas.

“Dodge that, Jedi,” the woman said, pulling her shirt over her face.

Luke scrambled to do the same, but he already had a lungful of the stuff...and…

He swayed. Stumbling back, away from the expanding cloud, he tried to lift his shirt with hands that refused to obey him. He bumped into the wall, arms flying out too late to catch him. He fell.

The gas was sweet on his tongue, and his eyes fluttered. He watched from the awkward position he fell in on the floor as their contact, still covering her face, leaned down and pressed a button on the sphere that had released the gas. It was sucked back into the container, but its effect lingered.

Luke couldn’t muster the energy to protest as his limp arms were cuffed in front of him, the world reduced to snapshots as his eyes drifted open and closed.

Being hefted over a shoulder.

Seeing Wedge’s limp form on the floor.

The entryway leading outside.

The inside of an outdated but well-cared-for ship.

Finally he was set on a bunk and one hand cuffed to the wall instead of to his other hand. He blinked blankly at the weapons supplier. His mind felt so, so slow. All he could comprehend was that he wasn’t where he was supposed to be, and he should be...he should probably try to…

She put her hand over his eyes, closing them. “Sleep, Jedi.”

He let the darkness swallow him whole.

--------------------

Vader started when he felt the light of his son burst into being in the system. He reached out, surprised the woman had managed to bring Luke all the way here--

Ah.

Of course.

His light was muted, asleep. Vader could trail his own signature across his son’s, as if stroking the boy’s hair with his prosthetic, and Luke only reacted with the equivalent of a sigh, almost turning into the touch. He didn’t seem to be harmed.

Most impressive. The bounty hunter would have to be commended - and then swiftly disposed of. No one could know that Luke had been captured, lest it reach his Master.

The bounty hunter’s ship requested permission to land, and Vader signaled Piett to grant it before stalking off the bridge to meet them in the hangar. He went alone.

Vader stood with his hands on his hips as the ramp hissed, depressurizing to allow the ships’ passengers to exit. The clang as the ramp hit the ground echoed through the empty hangar, and then the woman walked down it, his son over her shoulder.

“Milord, I’m here to cash in the bounty for Luke Skywalker. Unharmed, as requested,” she said, stopping in front of him.

He didn’t need anything to confirm it was his son, and she didn’t offer any. Few of the bounty hunters trying to pass off pretenders had even bothered.

“Give him to me,” was all he said.

Luke’s limp form was pressed into his arms, and he allowed himself a moment to examine his son’s face outside of a holo for the first time since Bespin. He noted his right hand - good, he had gotten a prosthetic. Regardless, it would be replaced with one of higher quality than the Rebellion could hope to provide as soon as possible. He was already working on a design, and had hopes that Luke would help him finish it.

“Stay here, your payment will be delivered shortly.”

As soon as the door closed behind him, Vader set Luke down gently, leaning him against the wall. He commed the bridge. “Admiral, open Hanger 6. It was a false alarm.”

Picking his son up again, he continued to the officer’s suite near his own that had been converted to house the boy. He felt the moment the bounty hunter was sucked into the vacuum of space and her life snuffed out, and he smiled, gently pressing his helmet to Luke’s forehead.

They had time before Palpatine learned of Luke’s whereabouts.

And soon, they would overthrow him and rule the galaxy as father and son. He could give his child what he failed to give his wife, and he had no doubts that Luke would make a far better Emperor than Palpatine ever had.

It was only a matter of time.

[brooklynislandgirl]

Volentine's Wishes

Keni,

I remembered what you said last year, about the small rodent-giving practices. It took some time to gather both information and the rodents, but I did it. Apparently, it is cruel to keep just one of them, which makes sense. This is probably why they are a symbol of love! It is very important that they stay together once in love.

So, I procured two of them. However, two has turned into seven in the time it took me to return with them. They should all be very friendly, at least, I’ve been petting them daily as I was advised. By the time the five babies were born, both parents stopped biting me during these pettings, so it must have worked. They are very friendly now!

I hope they will bring you much happiness and love, as you do me,

-A

~*~  ~*~  ~*~

It wasn’t until she’d reached her quarters that Melakeni Ivers allowed her composure to come apart. She leans back against the door almost the moment before it seals itself into place and takes a deep and shuddering breath, letting the ache flow through every fibre of her body. Her eyes squeeze shut and she rolls the back of her head against the solidness behind her. It is a grief that she’s held onto tightly, until now, where she can set it free. He had been so close. And she hadn’t so much of a glimpse of him before he was gone again.

She is used to having an Anakin-shaped hole living inside of her. She is used to traversing through her day offering comfort and healing to those who are sick and hurt without a second thought, be they Jedi or civilian. Consulting with other healers, the medical droids, the Masters who are terribly good at exhibiting external compassion when very little stirs them within. She is used to running her fingers through the soil of the medicinal herbs, feeling their life thrive in the vibrancy of their leaves, the aroma their oils leave behind that in some ways faintly remind her of a home she has not seen in too many years.  These kinds of days drift by with an ease that blurs and blends them into the back of her mind into a quiet sort of white-noise memory. Those days Anakin’s Presence is simply a close and often soothing companion, the thing that gives her softest smiles their brightness. That keeps the glow of her eyes alive and glimmering even when she is wilting from exhaustion.  There are days when she is accompanying her Master as either a tool or a prop or an extra set of senses, hands and so on. She has never been able to explain once she overcame her fear of the man why it is that he appeals to her so, beyond what is normal through the bonds Jedi and their apprentices. She cannot explain because she doesn’t know what it is, or why it still remains as strong as it does. When she is with him, there is very little time for introspection, and Anakin’s Presence is a buffer against the too much; too much pain, too much heat and awareness and agony. He is the softness that keeps her focused, keeps her thriving.

But ones like today? The ghost of him cannot fill the hole left behind. The abject yearning that claws its way through her until everything feels like it is in tatters and the only remedy is to find herself with arms wrapped around his waist. Breathing him in and assuring herself that he is alive and as whole as he can be, and that harm’s way has not found a way to sink its teeth into him. The want of his lips on her neck as she presses her face into his hair or his chest. There need be nothing wanton about any of it, just the language they speak of and to each other in their own way, that connection and completion they feel with no one else but each other.

When the quiet little sob of grief is finally swallowed down she opens her eyes and squares her shoulders. Straightens her robes and smooths her hair back into place. Reaching out with the Force, she trips the switch of the small lights of her chamber, and feels everything settle around her. Feels she is being... stared at.

The room is not so large that she cannot immediately find what is amiss, not so filled with all the possessions that they are not, by rite and tradition, allowed to have. The pillows have eked by as necessary bedding for frail limbs. The chest to keep her robes and secret things likewise, traded and bartered and smuggled for through illegal channels. The Council does not know that at least three of the grandest cities belong to her city and that she has made use of them in her private hours.

She cannot help but smile to herself. One of these days, she will bring Anakin. A moment later, green like forests, she shakes her head to diminish the daydream that springs up from that particular thought, and she makes her silent barefooted way to where the little enclosure is draped with one of her spare robes. It is the note that finds itself in her hand first. There is no residual warmth on the flimsi of his touch but she can imagine the sweeping strokes of his stylus. She runs a fingertip over the letters and feels the bright bloom of his excitement conveyed within them, as well as the near painful preciseness used to make every letter correct, the verbal equivalent of his wording and cadence. There is a pulse that rushes through her as her nastic responses quicken. She lifts the note to her lips after the seventh read-through. A dozen kisses saved for later.

Each time her giggles come a little louder until they fill the small room with joy. She can imagine what his hand will look like, the nicks and scars from having taken repeated torment to befriend their new little family. She will need to make a salve for it. For now though, she can feel herself humming within on an oscillating frequency normally reserved for more intense moments of Inevitable Doom. Her hands actually shake a little as she reaches out to pull aside her robe. And there within their containment, one peeking out of the doorway of what looks like some clay-moulded bark, is a tiny rodent. All twitchy nosed and sleek mottled fur and those restive dark eyes that had spied her even from across the darkened room. A few investigative sniffs proves her not to be Anakin and there is some hesitation as its little fight-or-flight instinct is engaged, though when she sets the lid aside and drapes her knuckles against the gravel, it eventually comes to see what she is. 

And this is inherently the danger of herbivores, because he does try to make a snack of one of her fingers. Right then. She rises and gathers bits of clover and mint and other greens from the neat little plants kept along shelves of her walls. Ones that she mists morning and night and whispers her truths to, the very ones that Anakin always seems to enjoy visiting, one of the things he likes about her chamber, that brings him a kind of only-slightly-guilty happiness. The little vole makes quick work of most of the meal, then drags away some for his mate, or so she presumes. She will have to research their care and feeding, though it seems that Anakin has, in fact, provided them a lovely little home to the best of his ability. She goes to sit at her desk and pulls out her datapad.

M-D-A The specimens that you have delivered to me are exactly perfect for the research project. They seem satisfied with their current conditions and of course I will keep them under the strictest observation. You have my absolute gratitude for being able to assist me, and you find me in your debt. I would be most glad to share the results of these observations with you upon your return to Galactic City, where I may properly thank you for going out of your way for me, my oldest friend.

I hope your latest mission sees you in good spirits and that the Force keeps you safe. I very much love hearing of your adventures off-world and the holo-net can hardly make up for the personal details your telling of them brings.

I am unaware of having to travel in the near future, so if you should have any need of me in the meantime, I of course will gladly look forward to your messages. Until then, know I wish you health and good cheer. May the Force be with you, always. With deepest respect and admiration, Melakeni

It seems cold and brittle and distant, like starlight on a moonless night. It feels like there is so much left unspoken because that is how it must be, in coded messages and aching spirit.  Anakin understands and she would never trade any of this save for another life where they might be free of constraints put upon them by the Order. Though she does wonder if that would make him happy or if what is now frustration would become something dull and listless, the bound-up denial of his natural compassion and desire to help those that need him most. It is a thing to consider, because as far as she is aware, they must be together as well, or suffer the same kind of separation sickness as the two little rodents tending each other and what she assumes are their five adorable children.

And what does she hope that he sees?

That they are loved already, mostly sight-unseen and bite-unfelt. That through their tiniest little glimmers of presence she feels even more connected to Anakin in his absence. That her message carries all of her love and hopes for him. That he has but to think of her and she will reach out to him across time and space and anything else that dare come between.

With or without the Time of Voles, with or without his physical proximity, there is no one that can occupy the shape of him inside of her.

[irrfahrer]

Your Muses Speakingpatterns!

What terms, Phrases, names and words does your Muse use  frequently? What are their meanings? What are the situations your Muse uses the phrases in? Where did they caught those phrases? Chose 3-5 words, phrases or names your Muse uses frequently and explain their significance!

Kriff, Kriffer, Kriffing, Kriff this- Ziv has the bad mouth of a spacer. While when she had been a young teenager in the Jedi-Temple she only used the Term when she was startled and therefor slipped in her words, after she was send to the AgriCorps and starts spending time in sickbays, Ziv completly takes over the vernacular of her patients. Beeing a angry teenager she liked the thought that she could make people- especially Jedi-Masters- flinch or frown a little with her use of language. Her patients were either Soldiers or civilians in very much pain, so what those people blurted out was accordingly not exactly nice or polite. It became worser after the Order 66 when Ziv would spend time in Spaceports and places that are not exactly known for a high social status, which meant that she took over even more from her patients. By now the mere word of the word “kriffing” in Zivs sentences simpy shows that probably a subject is going to follow in the sentences. On a Sidenote: Zivs Voiceclaim is Courtenay Taylor, so have fun imagining the Tynnan spitting out profanitys with that soft voice!

Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force- it is hard to forget the phrases one grew up with. While Zivs temprament usually get the best of her in the seldom situation where she can hold herself back she will repeat the code in her mind to calm herself down as if she is once again the cub meditating in the Temple. Usually it will only calm her a few seconds until she just starts cursing like a spacer. 

Cub- is a nickname Ziv uses in different variations that depends on the situation and relationship to the person she is using the name for. For one its a term of endearment in the equivalent of “dearie”, “child” or “little one” that could be neutral to refer to a younger person, to calm someone with a sweet nickname, and also sometimes used degrading when Ziv says it with a sharper voice by making a point about the opponents mental maturity (She uses it to refer to @psychometrictouch ‘s Cal and a few times to @poewingsdameron‘s Poe- though only affectionately towards the latter.). On the complete other side of the sprectrum, Ziv also uses “Cub” as the equivalent of “sugar” and a legitime signal that she is flirting. She uses it constantly in a theard with @trueheartofarebel , which had hilariously not been noticed yet. Ziv is not going to elaborating when she is using “cub” in a certaine way and finds it hilarious to leave people, who spend a little more time around her to notice her speakingpattern, end up wondering.

Paws instead of hands, “Move your Tail!” Instead of “Move your ass!”, Pelt instead of Hair, “Don´t stick your whisker in other peopels buisness” instead of “Don´t put your nose in other peopels buisness” , Claws instead of Nails, etc... - Since Ziv is not a Human, her phrases are more leaning towards her own anatomy. Its simply a quirk from her beeing a Alien. “Mirrorbright, shines the moon...”- The Créche-Master Ziv grew up under was from Alderaan and usually sang the tradional lullaby to the children in their care. The song sticked to the Tynnan. If Ziv needs to calm people or humms or sings its usually this song she will use either with the lyrics or just the melody. Obviously much later in Zivs  life after the destruction of  Alderaan and the fact that the Deathstar had probably remainded many people on Alderaan of the moon “Mirrorbright” in the lyrics, the song lost the calming and peaceful meaning for Ziv. It made her utterly wrathful that the Empire even took this peaceful memory from her, that she could not even sing that lullaby to her daughters.

Tagged By:The Force     Tagging: @trueheartofarebel  @poewingsdameron  @belzinone @onehell-of-apilot @negotiaetor  @cfmartyrs  @crispydiplomatbonkghost @belzinone @echoedforce @thaneirstaer @fshto @lvkexskywvlker @healeroffee @secondsister @sithdestined @volatilekyber @greyfulcrum  @uniforced @archaeotech @masterofthelivingforce  @muddledbloodlines @envychosen @psychometrictouch @cfmartyrs @startrailed @empathyjedi  @sithmade @xxanatoss @rcfekjwtaardby  @resistancexfighters  @regretdestined @thezabrakassassin @lady-proudmoore @safrona-shadowsun @anierous-sunblade  ...and everyone else who wants to do the prompt!    

[lavenderek]

hi guys julie and i were talking about potential star wars stories that aren’t a part of this whole skywalker destiny shit all the canon movies can’t seem to let go of

and julie’s idea surrounded lesbians and a very heavy presence of Life Day because she hates me and wants me to be unhappy

my idea does not have life day in it because i have a soul. this was my idea that i pitched to her while i did my laundry and i dont think she was very impressed but i am impressed with myself.

so our main character is kristen stewart but purple. like her skin is a dusty sort of pastel lavender. but don’t let that fool you into thinking she is delicate - she is Indiana Jones But Backwards And In Space. her hair is like leonardo dicaprio’s in titanic, but wavy. 

her name is Gax McKu and she is an archaeologist. she is the protag of a series. her whole thing is that she likes to discover and learn about ancient cultures and artifacts, but she fuckin hates museums. and if another archaeologist is sponsored by someone who instructs them to bring the artifact to a private collection or a museum, she tracks it down and steals it and puts it back where it is supposed to be. so it’s sometimes indiana jones and sometimes ocean’s 11, because she has to do a heist to get the thing back. 

it’s just that other cultures and societies are lateral moves from gax’s own, neither superior nor inferior, and if somebody took some shit from her home planet she’d be peeved. besides, if we “discover” all the shit and take it away, there will eventually be nothing left for future scientists and historians to “discover.” 

anyway, i digress. 

this all takes place well before the prequels. 

ACT I

we find our protagonist at a dig site, and she has unearthed something totally baller like the fossilized bones of a gigantic space condor or like a prehistoric buried treasure or something, and she’s just like crouching and dusting it carefully, looking very shrewd and sexy. she’s probably got like colleagues also dusting shit and one of them brings her a rock and they talk about the rock. idk. 

this planet is like a mixture of how white people see africa, and australia. like some parts are a desert and some parts are a jungle kind of moment with lots of alien creatures. 

the people whose home planet this is, is - you remember in return of the jedi when there is a keyboardist who looks like a big soft elephant puppet? 

it’s those guys.

so they come up to gax at the dig site and interrupt her work, and she is very debonair about how she stands up and brushes her hands off to speak with them. they’re mad and they’re pointing at her and stuff. she understands their language and speaks to them in english like han does. she’s like “i don’t know what you’re talking about. we are here for this excavation only.” 

they take her to one of their cities in a vehicle that’s like a wide flat oval thing with a single wheel underneath in the very center. roads are on faintly glowing tracks. this isn’t an extremely urban type of city, there is a lot of greenery and the buildings are etched adobe clay. they are well maintained. this is a people who take care of their community and have a lot of dignity. 

she is brought to what we would assume is a beautiful chapel or church or something, with lots of colors painted in a very small geometric tessellation, but gax isn’t shocked or moved by this so we can assume she is familiar with these cities and culture. 

inside there is a vast collection of like beautiful stoneware, like marble and opal and granite and shit. lovely. but the biggest pedestal is empty. they glare at her and say stuff to her. she’s very gruffly like, “why would i take your moonstone sphere? i already catalogued this, check with jan bourno.” 

they insist and so she has to travel to another city, with a nervous friend who is john cho but he’s got a computer head like that computer head guy in cloud city. 

don’t tell me who this guy is or correct me that it’s just a thing he wears like google glass, because i don’t care. it’s a computer head and im the boss. 

john cho’s name is Flienn and he’s got a devastatingly handsome beard. 

they go to the other city because she’s got to investigate who took the thing. then she finds who took the thing and it’s a white guy, obviously. she fights him. gax has this cool laser knife that uses the same tech as a light saber but it doesn’t buzz as loud or glow as bright, which means she wears it in a holster on her belt, because she’s impossibly hot. flienn is held back by henchmen. he’s very damsel in distress. but gax wins and gets the bad guy to tell her who hired him. 

he was paid to get this thing because it is expensive and the rich guy collects rich stuff. he communicated through envoy and all he has is a name and a planet. the rich guy’s name is pelius bragnar. he’s scary. flienn checks on his computer head and tells gax that all records of bragnar have been wiped from any kind of system.

ACT II

they fly to pelius bragnar’s planet, and it’s a forest planet but it’s not like the endor moon, it’s just a very vertical, tree-based city with a lot of stone paths and structures based around the trees. this place is very urban, with a huge class gap. it is heavily policed and obviously corrupt. she meets an old colleague who is now a prosecutor. she is played by gabourey sidibe. her name is Graunda. she calls gax Sabine, and it turns out gax isn’t her birth name, which flienn did not know but gax makes it clear he’s not allowed to call her sabine. 

graunda is like, “yeah i know pelius bragnar, i was trying to shut down his gang that operates a drug ring and has the police force in his pocket, and so to control me they kidnapped my little sister. i can tell you where their gang does most of its operations on this planet if you promise to save my sister.” 

gax is like, “i don’t know what about my chosen profession indicated to you i was some kind of rescuer of sisters.” 

“ok, i’ve known you for like fifteen years and it’s not like you don’t have a history of vigilantism,” says graunda, “but go off i guess.” 

flienn is all, “the sphere probably isn’t being kept where they do their gang business, but this is all we have to go on.” flienn’s whole job in the narrative is to be stressed and point out the obvious in case the viewers are kathy and don’t get it. he mapquests the way there with his computer head and they have to devise a carefully designed plan to get in, this is the ocean’s 11 part. 

gax is expecting graunda’s sister to be like some 19-year-old and is not expecting her to be the pinnacle of beauty and femininity. she’s in her mid 30s and has big hips and perfect dark skin and almond eyes with like orange eyeshadow. she looks like a monster high doll if monster high dolls were fat and shaped like real people. her hair’s in twists that she’s got all along the crown of her head like a tiara, and then the rest of her hair is in these two low buns on the back of her head and they’re really big and round. they are wrapped in a golden thread. like my point is she’s a total babe and there is a fuckload of sexual tension.

her name is Lamaa. not like llama, the accent is on the second syllable.

they find her like locked in some kind of interrogation room. flienn cracks the code to the door. lamaa’s obviously been roughed up a little bit, and is tired.  

lamaa is super upset when gax tells her they can’t leave yet. gax is like, “sorry to add to what has probably been a shitty week for you, but what i came here for is a moonstone sphere.” maybe she goes over the history of the object a little bit. idk. 

they spy on somebody who somehow reveals where pelius lives, and there is a gala there next week. they aren’t expecting the tech in this room to have spyware that detects flienn’s computer head the way your work computer knows when you’re trying to plug your phone into the usb port to charge. they have to escape. lamaa is super smart but only ok with weapons and doesn’t have a lot of upper body strength so there’s a lot of sexy peril. 

they escape by the skin of their teeth and are now wanted by the corrupt police. they have to hide out in like the tree planet equivalent of a shitty motel and there is a hot love scene between gax and lamaa obviously, like, duh. it’s very steamy and people will be jerking off to it for eight hundred years.

flienn is bi. he doesn’t have a love interest in this installment, im just putting it out there. 

ACT III

they go in disguise to the gala, which means they have to dress in formal wear, which is also extremely sexy. lamaa wears a silky backless gown and her hair is coiled in a rope braid beehive. gax wears a formal vest and her hair in a slight bouffant. flienn wears a traditional fancy costume that involves sheer fabric wrapped around him and covering part of his head. he is not religious and doesn’t usually dress this way, but he has to hide his computer head. also he’s wearing eyeliner because why don’t more dudes wear eyeliner? it’s not even because he’s bi. lots of dudes wear eyeliner where he is from. 

they sneak around and find the sphere. i guess this is ocean’s 13, when matt damon has to seduce his way into the diamonds room. they get caught in there and are all held prisoner. gax and lamaa argue but it’s obviously just because lamaa is very scared of pelius, which makes flienn even more scared of pelius, which puts gax in a bad mood. she doesn’t really get scared until the physical danger begins. 

the physical danger begins. pelius comes in, The pelius. he is a twi’lek. he does a lot of sinister taunting and gax is mad because she’s nervous. 

lamaa escapes the ropes she is tied up with somehow and is able to get gax’s laser knife to her and they have to fight pelius’s henchmen, and they steal the sphere, and while she’s there anyway lamaa steals all his fancy gold and jewels and sticks them in her cleavage. they climb to the roof and use flienn’s drapes of fabric to zipline down some like fuckin ropes strung along all the treehouses and escape. pelius is like curse you gax mcku, i would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you meddling adults!! and your little computer head too!!! he is left as a future antagonist. 

lamaa is obviously a target now on the tree planet, so she goes back to the elephant puppet planet with gax. there’s another love scene but gax finds all the jewels and shit in lamaa’s bra. she’s like, “you can’t keep these.” 

lamaa is like, “i figured, i just didn’t want him to have them. i don’t know where these go.” 

so future stories will probably involve them trying to put those things back while also being chased by pelius and his drug lords. 

they all return to the dig, and now lamaa is wearing archaeologist clothes like gax, and her hair is pulled to the back of her head with a fancy barrette. gax is once again interrupted, but this time it’s by the guy who stole the sphere in the first place. he’s like, “pelius is going to kill me for giving up who hired me, and it’s your fault.” 

gax is like, “you’re an embarrassment to the science of archaeology. you’ve gone against the very tenets of our profession and i don’t care what happens to you.” 

this obviously makes him feel shitty, but rather than internalizing it he just hates her guts. he leaves, and she goes back to the dig and doesn’t watch him go. but he glares with contempt over his shoulder, because he will also be an antagonist in future installments. 

and that guy’s name? 

SHEEV PALPATINE.

i’m just kidding, these are all new characters, his name is like george or something. 

the end. 

give me money.

[coruscantexpat]

Bonds Unbroken - Chapter 18: Messy Business

“I wish to point out that this course of action is foolish,” Kreia muttered. She stalked along Meetra’s right as the three approached the Exchange suites, her vibroblade held in a loose but firm grip.

“Heard you the first three times, Majesty,” Atton snapped from Meetra’s other side, ignoring the glare Kreia shot him. His weapons were still holstered, but his left hand rested lightly on the butt of a blaster and his movements were tight and controlled. Meetra mirrored his anxiety, her spine ramrod straight, fingers white-knuckled against the length of her staff. She was no stranger to fighting, but she’d avoided it for nearly a decade; to seek it out now, and for reasons that her peers would have considered selfish, felt wrong somehow. Some of the old teachings ran too deep.

The gray-green Rodian standing guard at the door straightened as they approached, his large faceted black eyes darting between each of them. His natural musk, already strong, flooded out from him to permeated the air, eliciting both revulsion and nostalgia in Meetra. When she was young, she’d had to room with a Rodian padawan who suffered from night terrors. That sleeping arrangement had barely lasted two weeks, before which Meetra was sure she would suffocate. The Rodian before her, cloudy green rather than the emerald of her old bunkmate, drew himself up as she approached, his full height still a few inches beneath her own, and spoke, the sharp nasal tones tinged with aggression and fear. “Get lost, Jedi. You have some pretty big rocks to show your face around here, but you have no business with the Exchange unless you’re turning yourself in.”

Meetra felt rather than saw Atton tense beside her, his hand tightening on the blaster hilt. She reached out and put a steadying hand on his arm, waiting until she felt him relax, the wiry muscles under the jacket loosening a fraction, before removing it. Her eyes didn’t leave the Rodian’s. “Luxa sent us.”

His snout crimped, antennae curling down toward his forehead. “Luxa didn’t say you were… Do you know what you’re getting into? Slusk knows you’re a Jedi. You think he won’t jump at the chance to turn you over to Goto?” He shook his head, voice quavering. “He doesn’t need you alive.”

Meetra smiled, and the expression was not a happy one. “I know.”

The Rodian hesitated a moment longer, then turned and thumbed a speaker to the side of the door. “Hey, Vula! Slusk has a visitor. Everything checks out, so open up, will ya?”

There was a long moment of silence, followed by a heavy thunk as the door locks released, and the Rodian turned back to Meetra, the approximate of a sorrowful expression on his inhuman features. “Good luck, Jedi.” Before she could answer, he rabbited, leaving the three of them to stand alone as the suite cycled open.

Meetra led the way, staff held defensively in front of her, but the room’s only occupant was a human woman with mousy brown hair seated behind a desk tucked into the far corner. She lifted her head, frowning at the three armed interlopers, then glanced back at the datapad on her desk. “I’m afraid there’s been a miscommunication - Director Slusk has no appointments today. I’m not sure why Koobis wanted you buzzed in, but I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.” She stepped around the desk, one arm held out in the direction of the door.

“Vula, right?” When the woman nodded, Meetra relaxed her grip on her staff and forced an easy grin. She imbued her words with the Force, impressing her will into each syllable. “Slusk is a busy man; I’m sure he just forgot to write down our appointment.” Meetra waved toward the entryway beyond Vula’s desk, fingers twisting in a complicated gesture. “You can make an exception this one time.”

Vula’s face went slack, her gaze vacant, for a moment, then she blinked and her eyes focused on Meetra again. “That’s not possible. Again, I have to ask you to leave.”

Meetra frowned, but tried again, putting more power behind her words. “Either way, we need to speak with Slusk.” She made the spiraling gesture again. “You can let us through to see him.”

“No.” Vula’s voice was firm. She stepped back behind the desk, one hand disappearing beneath its surface. “Please leave, or I will have to call security.”

Meetra stared at her, completely at a loss, but Atton stepped in. He crossed to the desk, leaned an arm on it, blaster in hand, and flashed Vula a vicious grin. “Here’s the thing: we’re going in there to see Slusk. Now, you can help us with that and open the door, or we can… remove you from the situation and let ourselves in. Your choice.”

Vula’s eyes, large and dark, widened further with every word. Her visible hand shook, the short nails clattering against the surface of the desk. Meetra moved to stand next to Atton and gently touched his arm. He glanced sideways at her, but she kept her eyes on Vula. “We just want to talk to Slusk, that’s all. You can leave - none of us will come after you, and Slusk never has to know you let us through.” When Atton didn’t move, she pressed down a little harder on his arm. “We don’t want to hurt you, Vula.” At this, he seemed to get the hint and slid his arm off the desk.

The receptionist’s hand hovered in the liminal space at the edge of the desk, wavering between above and below, then she lifted it to the terminal on top. “G-go on in, but he has guards. Gamorreans and bounty hunters, mostly.” The door behind her slid open with a soft whoosh, revealing a wide communal space similar to the Ithorians’ compound. “Take a right out that room and follow the hallway to the end. You’ll find Slusk’s office.” Vula’s gaze darted between Atton and Meetra, with a quick glance back at Kreia. “I - I can really just go?”

“Of course,” Meetra said, and Vula fled almost before the words were out of her mouth. 

Atton watched her go until she was out of sight, then turned back to Meetra. “So… what was all that?” He waggled his fingers in a vague imitation of hers.

“A perfect example of running before one learns to walk.” Kreia joined them and cast a sour look at Meetra. “It would be wise to avoid exposing your weaknesses so blatantly.” Meetra flinched at the rebuke, but didn’t disagree. Her connection to the Force was returning, but her abilities were progressing much slower. However, the idea of threatening a woman simply doing her job wasn’t any more appealing. Kreia shook her head and motioned toward the now open door. “Shall we continue with the foolishness?”

“Need a hammer to drive that point deeper?” Atton snarked, but Kreia ignored the jab. He turned to Meetra again. “The sooner we get this over with…”

“I know.” She gripped her staff tighter and started forward, the other two following in her wake. The wide area was empty save for a handful of desks and the odd bench. Whether the occupants had all left for the day or if the furniture was simply window dressing, it wasn’t clear, and in all honesty, it hardly mattered. Fewer people to fight was perfectly fine with Meetra. With Atton and Kreia in tow, she threaded her way through the desks to the hallway Vula had indicated. They passed through the door at the end and stopped dead at the tableau before them.

Half a dozen people were crowded around two tables in the room: an almost even split between aliens and humans, all very clearly armed. The last was obviously Slusk; Quarren were hardly difficult to identify. He was the first to recover from the surprise entrance, glassy blue eyes narrowing as his mouth tentacles flared outward from his face. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised; only a Jedi would be so bold as to deliver herself to the Exchange.” His tentacles folded neatly beneath his jaw as he composed himself. “It hardly matters with the bounty on your head, but what possessed you to trespass here? Was your freedom such a burden?”

“You’re mistaken, Slusk.” Meetra kept her tone light, hoping the breeziness would put Slusk at ease. Judging from the way his tentacles curled up toward his mandibles, he thought himself in control. “I’m not a Jedi.” Slusk made a guttural noise, the Quarren equivalent of forcing air through the nose in amusement. “I’m just here on behalf of the Ithorians.”

“And what do those cud-chewers want from me?”

Meetra leaned against her staff, her posture loose, but still ready to launch herself at Slusk’s throat if he made the wrong move. “You know the situation with Czerka and the restoration effort. Czerka’s had a rough go of it recently.” She shrugged, implying her involvement without confirming it. “At this point, I think it would be more costly for you to continue working with them.”

“You are good for a small moment of humor, Jedi.” Slusk’s mandibles fluttered in silent laughter. “I couldn’t care less about those hammerheads and their squabbles with Czerka. Should they become an actual problem, I’ll take care of them myself.” He turned away, moving toward an exit on the opposite side of the room, and continued to speak over his shoulder. “Matu, Nahata, Benok: bring me whoever’s working the door. After you dust these fools.” The door slid shut behind him.

Meetra lunged forward before it closed entirely, catching sight of her companions moving with her. She collided with the nearest bounty hunter, a yellow-green Rodian, as Kreia swirled past to engage the the room’s lone Aqualish. Atton dropped an elbow onto one of the tables, flipping it onto its side for cover. He leaned around it and opened fire on a second Rodian and a human standing too close together. They scattered, but not before he managed to wing the former. 

Matu, Meetra’s Rodian, rolled with her strike, tumbling out of reach of the staff, then stood, pulling a pair of cruel blades from their holsters on his waist. He feinted to the left and darted in toward her right when she swung, earning a right hook to the face as a reward for falling for the ruse. He reeled back and Meetra aimed a swing at his knees, but he managed to stagger out of the way with only a glancing blow. Matu recovered quickly and threw one of the death blades back at her. Meetra swept a hand through the air, sending the weapon tumbling harmlessly to the side, and threw herself at Matu again. She collided bodily with him this time, slamming a shoulder into his chest as she drove the end of her staff up into his chin. The blow laid the Rodian out cold and Meetra rolled away from his body. Blaster fire struck the ground near her feet and she darted behind the flipped table, smacking into Atton’s back. He cursed as he caught himself, but his grip was gentle when he reached back to push her upright. “Nice of you to drop in. Your guy down for the count?”

“For now. Still leaves us with four.”

“Three. Thanks for paying attention.” He leaned around the table again and fired off another volley of shots. The other Rodian, a blue-green variety, answered with his own blaster. His human ally lay nearby, too motionless to be unconscious. Atton jerked back behind cover, his shoulder against Meetra’s a solid comfort in the chaos. Blaster fire peppered her side of the table and she curled closer to Atton to stay behind cover. Somewhere on the other side came a gurgled scream, made more garbled by Aqualish vocal cords; it was suddenly cut short and Atton grimaced. “And then there were two. Ready?”

Meetra nodded. She gathered her legs beneath her and threw herself out from behind the table, using the Force to further the jump. Blaster fire followed her, but momentum kept her safe. She slid to a stop and reoriented on the other human, Benok, and threw out her hand, channeling the Force down on him. He flew backward into the wall with a heavy thud, his blaster flying out of his slackened grip. Meetra charged, but Benok recovered quickly and yanked a vibrocutter free from his belt. He met her head on, weapons crossed, and kicked out at her stomach. She threw herself back in time to avoid the full strength of the blow, but she still stumbled, grip loosening on her staff. Benok thrust the vibrocutter under her guard and hooked it around the staff, pulling it free of her hands and yanking her forward, then swung the blade at her neck.

Lighting arced across the room as Meetra dropped to the floor to avoid the vibrocutter. Benok’s spine arched, his body quivering in place for a long moment before he fell to the floor in a heap, blade clattering to the side. Meetra kicked it away before hesitantly rising from her crouch. Kreia lowered her hand, a flicker of energy still playing around the tips of her fingers and the ghost of a smile on her lips. Atton stepped out from behind the table, the second Rodian handled, and joined Meetra, one blaster trained on Benok’s motionless form. She knelt and felt at the man’s throat. His pulse was there, but weak and thready. Rising, she cast a sideways glance at Kreia, but the old woman was focused on cleaning her vibroblade and didn’t meet her eyes.

Atton’s hand on her shoulder startled Meetra, but she contained her flinch and let him pull her around to face him. “Are you alright?” She frowned and followed his gaze to her stomach. The hem of her tunic on the right side was stained dark red, a thin tear in the fabric exposing a shallow gash along her torso from the bottom of her rib cage to the top of her cloth pants. She stared at it, almost without seeing. Matu’s second blade must have caught her when she bum rushed him; she hadn’t even felt it. Still didn’t, even now.

Meetra glanced back up to see Atton watching her closely, and she forced a smile. “It’s okay - just a scratch.” Compared to the scar on her leg, anyway. She retrieved her staff and made for the door Slusk had disappeared through, trusting Atton and Kreia to follow. Inside was another conference area, this one smaller than the first, with another door leading out and a single Gamorrean occupant. Meetra tensed, but he held up his hands up to show he was unarmed. She shared a frown with the others before turning back to the Gamorrean. “So, what is this?”

“My loyalties lie with Luxa,” he rumbled, shrugging massive shoulders. “She says you are strong; I want to see how strong you really are.” He put a hand on the door control panel; just one of his fingers covered half of it. “I will let you in, but you are on your own from there. Slusk will not be entirely unprepared.” The Gamorrean pressed the intercom switch, the plate creaking under the pressure. “Boss! Matu is here with Koobis. He is the fool who let the Jedi in. You want to see him now?”

“Of course.” Slusk’s voice came back in a burst of static. “Is the Jedi dead?”

“As dead as the rest of them.” He released the switch and gestured toward the door as the heavy locks thumped free, lumbering past the three as it cycled open. “Try not to die.” Meetra clenched her jaw and strode through, gathering the Force around her for comfort. It rang a little hollow, her connection still too weak and abilities too shaky.

To his credit, the only indication of Slusk’s shock was the way his tentacles flared outward from his face. He rose from behind his desk and came around to stand in front of it, undaunted by three armed intruders. Meetra stopped a few meters from him and held her staff away from her in one hand, her grip loose, free hand half raised in the air. “I meant what I said before: we’re just here to talk.”

“Yes, as evidenced by the bodies no doubt left in your wake.” Slusk scowled, cloudy eyes narrowing. “Will shedding my blood satisfy you, Jedi?”

“It doesn’t have to come to that. Pull your support, and you never have to see us again.”

“And admit to Goto that I have lost both Czerka’s loyalty and the very thing he has scoured the galaxy for since Revan’s disappearance?” His low guttural laugh was laced with bitterness. “I’m glad you find my situation humorous enough to jest.”

“Goto doesn’t have to know. You could leave the station, go to a planet beyond the Exchange’s control.”

“Foolish woman.” Slusk’s mandibles quivered with silent laughter, but the constant contraction of his tentacles betrayed his anxiety. “Nowhere is beyond Goto’s reach. You ask me to give up my power? You are asking me to end my own life.” He squinted at her suddenly, tentacles curling close to his neck. “Asking me to leave the Exchange, flee the station - this is not your idea. Who have you spoken to?”

“Do you really have to ask, Loppak?”

Meetra turned sharply, Atton and Kreia mirroring her. Luxa strode into the office, flanked on either side by two large Gamorreans. The one on her left gave Meetra a nod and a wink - the guard who’d let them into Slusk’s office. He’d found a large axe between then and now. Luxa batted her lashes at Meetra. “Gotta hand it to you, gorgeous: you are so much more efficient than I’d hoped. Thought I’d have to fight at least a couple of his boys.”

“Luxa. I should have guessed,” Slusk rumbled. He closed his eyes briefly, as if her betrayal caused him physical pain. “I knew your ambition would be the death of me.” He reached behind the desk and pulled out a long vibrosword, tossing its sheath to the side. “I’m sorry, Jedi. I doubt it will be possible for all of us to leave this room alive.”

“Wait - just wait.” Meetra held a hand out toward both Slusk and Luxa. Atton shot her a furious glare, but she ignored it. “You can leave, Slusk. Take enough credits to get off the station, enough to get past the Outer Rim. Find a planet in uncharted space where you can lay low for a few years, and Goto won’t find you.” She took a step toward him, careful to keep her staff held out away from her. “Luxa just wants control of this branch of the Exchange. That’s all.”

For a moment, there was only silence, and then Slusk began to laugh, a deep chuckle that sounded like asphyxiation. “You’re serious.” His mandibles continued to flutter as he held a hand out to Luxa. “I must give you credit, my dear. Only you would find the galaxy’s most gullible Jedi.” The hazy eyes returned to Meetra. “You think she will let you go if you help her? That she won’t turn you over to Goto and claim the bounty for herself?” Meetra said nothing and Slusk’s laughter faded as he met her eyes. “No, you didn’t think that - but you hoped. We are both betrayed; at least you were prepared for it.” Without another word, he launched himself at her. Meetra dove to the side, the Force-aided lunge carrying her across the room. Slusk didn’t deviate, thrusting his vibrosword at Luxa’s midsection. She danced back out of range as one of her Gamorrean goons intercepted the blade with his axe.

The office erupted into chaos. Kreia engaged the other Gamorrean while Atton dove behind Slusk’s to provide cover fire, and Luxa turned her attention to Meetra. She peppered the far wall, but Meetra was already moving, body low to the ground as she closed the distance between them. Luxa leapt back, but Meetra lashed out with the Force, throwing her off balance, and she hit the floor. Meetra brought her staff down hard, but the Zeltron rolled clear at the last second. She reached inside Meetra’s guard and caught her across the face with a sharp right hook.

Meetra staggered back, dazed, and Luxa darted forward, only to be sent skipping back by a burst of blaster fire from Atton. The moment bought Meetra enough time to recover and she retreated, staff held protectively in front of her. Luxa abandoned pursuit to return Atton’s shots, turning briefly when Kreia’s blade elicited a squeal from one of the Gamorreans, and Meetra took the opportunity to rush her. Luxa half-turned back in time to catch Meetra’s shoulder in her stomach, breath leaving her in a rush as their combined weight bore her to the ground.

Before Meetra could pin her, Luxa kicked free, wheezing something in guttural Gamorrean. The nearest of her goons peeled off from his fight and lumbered to her aid, swinging the savage battleaxe at Meetra’s torso. She fell back and rolled away before registering that he hadn’t followed her. She scrambled to her feet and turned back, staff thrust out to ward off a sudden blow.

The Gamorrean took a few stumbling steps, his axe slipping from suddenly nerveless fingers, and frowned at her, brows scrunched low over porcine eyes. Meetra’s gaze dropped to his chest and the reason for his confusion became clear. The last inch or so of a vibrosword jutted out from his abdomen just beneath the rib cage. As Meetra watched, the blade slid free with a vicious twist and the Gamorrean grunted, one hand lifting to touch the dark green blood dribbling down his stomach. He fell to the floor before his fingers reached their destination.

Revealed by his victim’s fall, Slusk flicked verdant blood from his weapon before leveling the blade at Meetra. Blaster bolts peppered the floor and furniture nearby as Atton and Luxa exchanged fire, but he didn’t flinch, hazy eyes fixed on hers. “I confess, there is a part of me that regrets my role in your fate, Jedi. The destruction of a noble people… no man truly wants that on his conscience.”

“You can rest easy then,” Meetra said, voice suddenly thick in her throat. “From everything I’ve been told, the Jedi killed themselves - and there are no Jedi here.”

Slusk let out a garbled cry, an expression of primal rage more than words, and lunged toward Meetra, bringing his vibrosword down in a sharp arc. Meetra caught the blade with her staff and shoved Slusk back, her strength augmented by the Force. Slusk skidded a few feet before catching himself and renewed his assault with an increased fury. Meetra held against the onslaught briefly before retreating out of his ranged and flinging a potted plant with a flick of her hand. The impromptu missile clipped Slusk’s shoulder, half-spinning him around and sending him to one knee. She took the moment to try and reach him again. “It doesn’t have to be this way! There’s a compromise; there always is!”

“Was there a compromise for the Sith?” Slusk snarled, the words almost lost in his gnashing mandibles. “Was there a compromise for the Mandalorians? Your words are empty!” He pushed himself to his feet and stalked toward her, his tentacles a corona around his face. “I meant what I said: the Jedi were a noble people. But they did not compromise. A pity that the last of them should be such a poor excu - ” Slusk’s tirade cut short as his head snapped sideways with a sudden impact and he collapsed in a heap, a fink pink mist permeating the space he vacated.

“He always did love the sound of his own voice.” Luxa mimed blowing smoke from her blaster barrel, her wide grin revealing she knew exactly how ridiculous the action was and how little she cared. Meetra dragged her gaze from Slusk’s body to his desk, only now registering the absence of Atton’s blaster fire. She could just barely see the top of his head, slumped against the wall, and a spattering of red across the chrome behind him. Luxa followed her gaze, the corner of her raspberry lips curving upward. “That’s the problem with friends, sweetheart. You look away for two seconds and they get into all sorts of trouble.” Her grin widened, belying her saccharine tone. “Pity. He was cute in that scruffy, bad boy kind of way.”

The rage was there almost before Meetra realized it, hot and heady in her chest, fizzling as it spread through her body. It had always been nearer to the surface for her than most padawans - something her teachers had tried to suppress and Revan had encouraged her to cultivate - but after her exile, she’d fought to keep the anger, at bay, no matter how good it felt. But right now, anger felt a lot better than helplessness.

Meetra launched herself at Luxa, a wordless shout tearing free from her throat. The Zeltron backpedaled, firing wildly, but Meetra drew the Force around her, the thin layer of energy deflecting the bolts. She felt the heat as they passed, close enough to singe her tunic, but she was too angry to care. Luxa leapt to the side, a move Meetra anticipated. She swung her staff wide, the end colliding with the Zeltron’s knees in a satisfying crack. Luxa fell with a scream, the thin blaster sliding out of her grasp. Meetra kicked it away and reached for her, but Luxa struggled to her feet, a Rodian death blade suddenly in her hand. She drove Meetra back with a few slashes, limping slowly forward as Meetra retreated.

“Not just yet, gorgeous.” Luxa’s voice hissed through clenched teeth, but she continued to follow Meetra doggedly. “Gonna take more than that to keep me on my knees. Honestly, though, if I’d known you cared so much, I’d have let Slusk kill him. You’re beautiful when you’re angry.” Meetra’s jaw clenched and she lunged forward, staff slicing through the air, but Luxa ducked, catching the staff on the backswing with her death blade and yanking it out of Meetra’s hands. Her grin sharpened as she tossed the rod aside. “And impulsive. I’m starting to believe that ‘not a Jedi’ claim.” She pressed forward as Meetra continued to retreat. “What’s wrong? All that heat burn itself out? He must’ve really meant something to you.”

“I don’t like to lose people.” Meetra didn’t rise to the bait, but fury cut every word short. She took another step back and the heel of her boot collided with a long, thin object, sending it skittering a short way to her left.

Luxa’s gaze flicked away to follow the noise, returning before Meetra could take advantage of the distraction. “Careful now. You might fall and cut yourself.” She chuckled, but Meetra ignored the jibe, focusing instead on the inadvertent confirmation: she’d kicked Slusk’s vibrosword. It was too far for her to reach, even if she threw herself towards it; the trajectory would only put her in the path of disembowelment and Luxa wasn’t likely to miss. A voice echoed softly in the back of her mind, faded with time and experience, cutting through the red haze of anger: She’s a brilliant tactician, but I worry her emotions will put her in jeopardy. That anger keeps her from thinking like a Jedi. The faint sting of reproach helped to clear her thoughts. She slipped one hand behind her back and reached out through the Force, feeling her way across the floor. The process was slow and her patience threatened to fray, but she kept at it until she felt the metaphysical “fingers” close around the vibrosword’s hilt.

Meetra’s concentration slowed her steps and Luxa responded in kind, smile fading a bit as her confidence wavered. “What’s going on behind that beautiful face, hmmm?” The smirk returned and she started toward Meetra again. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it quick. I’d never have gotten here without you, so it’s the least I can do.” A slight tense of her good knee was all the warning Meetra had before Luxa lunged, the obsidian blade bearing down in a wide arc. Meetra yanked on the Force tendrils around the vibrosword and it snapped through air into her hand. She thrust it out in front of her as Luxa closed the distance.

The Zeltron’s death blade went wide as it tumbled out of her hand, but it struck Meetra’s shoulder as it fell, keenly honed edge carving a short gash through the cream cloth and into her skin. Meetra flinched, a hiss of pain escaping between her teeth, but she held fast to the vibrosword and pushed it deeper into Luxa’s belly. Blood spattered Luxa’s mouth and stomach, the crimson dark against her amaranth skin. She coughed once, twice - the wet rasp of a collapsed lung, if the angle of the vibrosword’s entry was any indication - and blood misted Meetra’s face and chest. Luxa’s hands folded around Meetra’s on the hilt, tugging feebly at her fingers, but her strength was gone, leaking out along the vibrosword’s blade. Her legs gave out and Meetra released the hilt, letting her fall. Luxa continued to writhe, a pinned specimen who’d come loose from its board, and she struggled to pull the weapon free, but her movements were slower, coordination almost nonexistent. A few moments and she stilled completely, the light fading from her rose pink eyes.

Meetra staggered back, rage bleeding out as swiftly as Luxa’s life. Her stomach lurched, the few contents threatening to escape its confines, but she pushed the nausea back down with a deep breath. Registering the sudden quiet, she looked up to find Kreia watching her. The second Gamorrean was dead at her feet, several long slashes still oozing green criss-crossing his body, but Kreia’s blade was clean. Meetra’s chest constricted, the anger threatening to resurface. “How long have you - ”

A low groan floated up from behind Slusk’s desk, and Meetra broke off mid-sentence as she spun to face it. With a last glare for kreia, she crossed the room swifly and ducked behind it to find Atton trying to push himself into a sitting position with his right arm. His left rested in his lap and he was clearly doing his best not to jar it. Atton started at her appearance, but he managed a weak grin. “You know, I’ve had more than one person tell me a beautiful woman would be the death of me. You’d be surprised how often they’re almost right.”

“I absolutely wouldn’t.” Her bluntness startled a laugh out of him, quickly cut short with a wince. “Where are you hurt?”

“Well, my ego’s a little bruised - I was sure Luxa thought I was too handsome to kill.” Meetra resisted the urge to smack him and settled for a stern look. “Alright, serious answers only, then. She caught me in the shoulder with a lucky shot. Cracked my skull pretty good when I fell, too. Probably accounts for the gap in the last few minutes.”

Meetra investigated Atton’s shoulder more closely. The leather of his jacket was indeed darker there and she could make out a hole in the fabric, the edges charred by the bolt’s passage. Leaning around him, she found a matching hole on the opposite side of his shoulder. “Looks like a through and through. Are you bleeding?”

“Don’t think so. Pretty sure it’s cauterized.” Atton wiggled his fingers. “I think everything is mostly still in working order. Gonna be down a gun for a while, though.”

“I’ll take that over none” She moved to his other side and pulled his uninjured arm over her shoulder, her free hand looping around his waist. “Ready?” She waited for his nod and then stood, pulling him up with her. A hiss of pain escaped him as the movement tugged on his shoulder, but he waved away her concern as he lifted his arm from her shoulders. Meetra knelt to retrieve his blasters and held them while he reholstered each with his good arm, earning herself a rare genuine grin before stepping away to retrieve her staff. She avoided looking at Luxa and Slusk’s bodies as she passed, but her stomach still performed a traitorous somersault. She turned back in time to catch Atton looking from her to the Zeltron’s corpse. Meetra steeled herself for the congratulations, the well-meaning praise ignorant of the burden that comes with taking a life, but he said nothing, only nodded once and turned away. She followed, sweeping past Kreia without a word, and left the room, Atton close behind. Kreia trailed after them, silent save for the faint brush of her robes against the station floor.

Full chapter available on AO3 and FFN.

[visionmarred-archive]

Lunakalla sighed as she set her dualsaber down on the bed, closing her eyes and rubbing her temples with her fingers.

It had been a long day full of bickering ambassadors who seemed intent on disagreeing with everything the others were saying, and the consular in question stuck in the middle trying to get them to calm down. This was what her life was - a Jedi Master, the Barsen’thor, one of the best of the Order (and honestly, the best candidate for the next Grandmaster when Satele stepped down), stuck playing as nanny to a group of adults who whined like children. Perhaps if she knocked them upside the head, they would listen to reason.

Deep breaths. Calm yourself.

It was an esteemed position, she had to remind herself. The Council wouldn’t trust just any average lout with such a position, and they knew that Lunakalla was the best they had to offer. It was just difficult to remember that fact when she received what may well be a migraine from pompous nobles.

Lunakalla fell onto her bed, taking a deep breath and running her fingers through her hair. Turning to face her wardrobe, she lazily waved her other hand and opened it with the Force, closing her eyes and envisioning the items that she wanted. When she opened her eyes again, she had her holographic sketchbook and pencils in her hand.

Smiling to herself, she sat up and folded her legs together, setting her art supplies in her lap and finding a blank page in the databook.. Ever since she was a child, art had been her favorite way of relieving stress, or passing the time when she had no studies. She had owned the sketchbook since that time, and when she was feeling nostalgic, she’d flicker to the very first page and see that first drawing she’d ever made, one of a fruit tree.

Tapping her chin, Lunakalla hummed to herself as she thought of what she wanted to draw. Perhaps something from Belsavis’s landscape? She grimaced as she recalled some of the things the prisoners had gone through, and decided that no was her answer there.

With sudden clarity, she recalled a group of young tauntauns that she had seen during her mission on Hoth. She had initially thought they were alone, but when she had taken a closer look, Lunakalla saw their mother watching them, with what might have been the animal’s equivalent of content in its expression.

Twirling the pencil in her hands, Lunakalla set her pen to the surface of her holo-sketchbook, and began to draw out the scene as she saw it in her mind.

--

Tray balanced in one hand, Felix used the other to knock on Lunakalla’s door.

No answer.

That was a bit unusual. Ordinarily, she always answered within seconds, with either “Come in” or “Who is it?”, depending on her mood. (He had discovered that the latter meant she was a bit down, and had since always made sure to offer to leave her be if she didn’t want company.)

He knocked again, wondering if perhaps his girlfriend was asleep when she didn’t answer again. Felix debated taking the tray of tea back to the kitchen before deciding that he could at least leave it for her to enjoy when she woke up, and hopefully not disturb her rest in the process. Felix knew that the ambassadors had tried her patience today, and he wanted to leave something nice for her.

Opening the door as quietly as he could, he looked inside to see that not only were all the lights on, but Lunakalla was wide awake, moving a pencil over a databook and humming to herself.

“Lunakalla?” He asked, moving to hold the tray with both hands.

Her head snapped up as if she broke out of a trance, eyes wide in surprise. “Felix? Wha - ” Lunakalla’s gaze flickered from the lieutenant to the tray in his hands and back to him, giving him a small smile. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you knock. Please, come in.”

“Sorry to intrude, sweetheart.” Felix said as he walked over to her bed, setting the tray down on the end table and leaning forward to press a kiss to her forehead. “I thought maybe you were asleep, so I’d just leave you some tea for when you woke up.”

“There’s no need to apologize.” Lunakalla shook her head, turning her attention to the tea. “Is that…? ”

“Still your favorite, I hope.” He said, opening the small container of honey on the tray and putting a scoop inside the cup.

“Sapir with honey is still my favorite. Thank you, Felix.” She grinned, accepting the cup and spoon from him. As Lunakalla stirred the tea, Felix took a look at the databook on her lap.

“What are you working on?” He asked her, leaning over to see.

At the question, Lunakalla’s cheeks pinkened and she moved quickly to turn the databook off. “It’s nothing! It’s… it’s nothing.” She said, avoiding his gaze.

“Very convincing, Master Jedi.” Felix teased, sitting beside her on the bed. “You don’t have to tell me, Lunakalla. I don’t mind.”

She was silent for a moment, taking a sip of tea before shaking her head. “I’m… being silly. Here.” Lunakalla used her free hand to turn the databook back on, passing it over to Felix.

She had been sketching a group of baby tauntauns from the looks of it, and Felix smiled widely. “I didn’t know you were an artist!”

“Yes, well…” Lunakalla brushed some hair out of her face, avoiding his eyes again. “It’s not very good, I know, but I… I enjoy sketching sometimes. Painting, when I have the supplies.” She looked at his face then, an uncharacteristically anxious expression on hers. “Like I said - I know it’s not very good, but - ”

Felix shook his head, holding a hand up. “Let me stop you right there. I don’t know what you’re so insecure about, sweetheart. I know this is a work in progress, but…” He took in the scene on the page, amazed at her attention to detail. “This is already so beautiful.”

Lunakalla smiled, her cheeks getting even pinker. It was adorable. “I… well… thank you.” She took another sip of her tea, those pretty brown eyes looking back at the page. “I don’t care for the eyes on that one, though. Or the horns there, see?” She used her pencil to point at one of the tauntauns in the middle. “They’re uneven. It’s awful.”

He couldn’t help but snort at that. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Lunakalla. Really!” He laughed when she stared pointedly at him, her eyebrow quirked. “The problem is that you’re the one drawing it, sweetheart. The artist is their own worst critic, remember? I think this is lovely, and if you don’t mind… I’d love to watch you draw.”

She thought for a moment before nodding tentatively, looking very uncharacteristically bashful for a woman as confident as she was. “Well then… get comfortable, I suppose. And don’t tell anyone about any profanities I may utter in the process.

Felix laughed again, leaning forward to give Lunakalla a chaste kiss. “Your secret is safe with me, Barsen’thor of the Jedi.”

[inyri]

Equivalent Exchange (a SWTOR story): Chapter 36- The Best Policy

Equivalent Exchange by inyri Fandom: Star Wars: The Old Republic Characters: Female Imperial Agent (Cipher Nine)/Theron Shan Rating: E (this chapter: M)

Summary: If one wishes to gain something, one must offer something of equal value. In spycraft, it’s easy. Applying it to a relationship is another matter entirely. F!Agent/Theron Shan. (Spoilers for Shadow of Revan and Knights of the Fallen Empire/Knights of the Eternal Throne.)

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***

The Best Policy

Theron exhales.

“Probably too much to hope it’d stay a secret for long,” he mutters, straightening up. He doesn’t let go of her, though, fingers working along her neck- after this long in kolto she ought to be a limp mess but it’d probably take years to get all the tension out of her muscles. Her shoulder’s better for the time spent soaking, at least. “I just- Force, I’m never going to hear the end of it. You’re sure Lana doesn’t already know? My dossier-”

Nine does shake her head then, immediately regrets it, and makes a muffled mmph noise instead that’s half-negation and half trying not to throw up on the War Room table. “She doesn’t. And that was never in your dossier- say what you like about the state of the Republic now, whoever knew that secret kept their cards close. None of us knew.”

“But my mother was, wasn’t she? After Rishi-”

“No. We kept that out deliberately, even after we knew.”

(It hadn’t even been her idea; Lana had been the one to suggest the omission. “It will make him far too much of a target. Anyone trying to lure out the Grand Master-”

Guilty conscience or not, Lana had been right. That was a method she’d used herself when there was no other way to a target: take a friend or lover or spouse instead, living collateral to be dangled as bait.  (Never children. She drew the line at children. Ruthlessness was all well and good, but that kind of sociopathy was a one way ticket to a padded cell- or Shadow Town, which was just a padded cell with better locks.) With his parentage on his dossier Theron would have had every Sith with access to the mainframe- which was nearly all of them back then, puppet to the Council that Sith Intelligence was in its resurrected form- hunting him within a week. He’d have been dead, or worse, within two. And for what? By the rules of negotiation he’d have been doomed, a marginally valuable hostage that the Republic would never in a hundred years have bartered for one of its most celebrated heroes. Satele might have come for him herself, of course. But would she have?

Lana had looked to her, questioning, and she heard Theron in her head: my agent, the words bitter on his tongue. Like it’s a coincidence we share a name.

“It wouldn’t be fair, would it?” She’d nodded, locking down the file. There was very little fair about their line of work and nothing given for free, but this seemed somehow right after the awfulness of Rishi. It wasn’t a question of judgment. Her judgment was fine. It was- “I agree. We leave it out.” )

He has to clear his throat before he continues, whatever he meant to say first catching on his  tongue. “I didn’t... I didn’t know that. Thank you.”

“Thank Lana,” she says. Theron’s hands go still. “She approved the addendum.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask. Did she think you’d go too easy on me?”

She turns her head just enough that he can see her wink. “Or put too much in. Theron Shan, Republic SIS. Caf addict. Terrible taste in music-”

“You used to let me pick the music, if I remember correctly.” Hands slipping beneath the knot of her hair, he cups the base of her skull, leans down to kiss the top of her head and then her forehead and then further still, curling over her to nip at the tip of her nose. “I must have missed the complaints trying to block out your off-key singing.”

“I like you-” she closes her eyes, a slow blink; he’s not wrong. She was never any good at singing- “so I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Let’s see. Easily identified due to prominent cybernetics and appears to own exactly one jacket, or possibly twelve copies of the same jacket. Marginal slicer. Does this absolutely delightful thing with his tongue-”

When Theron grins she can feel it, his breath huffing against her face. He’s trying not to laugh but can’t quite hold it back and he has to let go of her to brace himself against the table. “Please tell me you’re not serious.”

“Of course I’m not.” Oh, it sounds good to hear him laugh. He’s so good at distracting her from the stress of everything and she’s been so bad at reciprocating; she brings him caf and the best of what she can sneak from the mess hall, pulls him into bed to work the day’s tension off in pleasanter ways, but it’s not nearly enough. He deserves so much better than her fumbling attempts at comfort. “Someone else might have gotten ideas-” she rests her hand on his, clumsy in its heavy brace- “and I wouldn’t want them trying to edge in on my territory.”

“Your?”

A loaded question for all of its brevity.

She shrugs in reply, forcing a smile in place of words she doesn���t know how to say, and Theron overlaps her little finger with his thumb. She can’t quite feel it properly- what ought to be the friction of his skin on hers just registers as pressure- but it’s better than nothing. Better than it should be. A gift. (Or not, but the idea of the alternative is far less pleasant.)

“It wouldn’t have been much,” she says softly, “in the long run. But if the war had kept going it might have kept you out of the crosshairs for a little while. We just- I just-”

The corners of his mouth quirk upward. “Not ‘compromised objectivity’?”

“Certainly not. I’m a professional, after all.” He’s still standing just beside her chair; she leans on him, rests her aching head against his side. “And we did say no strings.”

“We did. No strings, no sides, intact judgment et cetera.” Theron glances down at her and then turns, just enough that she can rest against his stomach instead. When he exhales she moves along with him, gently to-and-fro with the in and out of his breath. “So I probably shouldn’t mention that I put a DNE on your file after Ziost, then.”

She blinks. Lies by omission were one thing, the usual selective recordkeeping that let one spare allies and target enemies as the situation required, but- “Trant let you? Forgive me when I say that seems unlikely.”

“Let is a strong word. He asked me how to put together a team that’d survive you and I gave him my honest opinion: we couldn’t. Do Not Engage.” He scrawls the words in the air with his finger. “You were taking us apart- no, no, I know you didn’t have a choice-” she’d gone tense against his body, not wanting to argue; they were all following their orders and they both know that but she must have killed a dozen or more of his friends in those last few months of war before the Zakuulans came. But he strokes her hair until she calms. “We all did what we had to back then and despite what my… what Jace said, my loyalty to the Republic was never a question. But when it came to you-”

“I told you I was bad for you.”

“Stop that. I told you-” his voice is gentle and he almost taps her forehead before he mercifully thinks better of it- that would have hurt, today- and just presses his fingertip against it instead- “that you weren’t. Aren’t. You saved me. I had to- I had to return the favor.”

Stars, she doesn’t deserve him. “He didn’t listen, you know.”

“I know. But I tried.” Theron sighs. “Anyway, you’re sure Lana doesn’t-?”

Three knocks.

Lana’s silhouetted in the doorway when it slides open, caf pot in one hand and three mugs dangling from the other. “I take you’ve finished your calls? You mentioned before that we three needed to talk.”

“Yes. Hold on.” She presses the intercom, opening a line to the bridge. “Kaliyo, we’ll be in the War Room. Ring through if we’re needed.”

“Got it.” The speaker crackles as the reply comes through. “Ears off?”

Nine sighs. “What do you think?”

“Secrets, secrets are no fun,” Kaliyo drawls. “Locking you down. Have fun.”

She straightens in her seat, beckoning Lana into the room; Theron takes a step back and then settles into the chair beside hers. “Two quick things before we start- I’ve got Ioana Rist working on a countermeasure to the Exarchs’ new little trick.”

“How much is that going to cost us? Their work doesn’t come cheaply.” Setting the caf and cups down on the table between them, Lana slips around to the far side.

“Only a case or two of brandy. I’ll talk to Hylo about sourcing it, but that’ll be strictly out of my pocket. We’re on fragile enough ground with our Jedi as it is without word getting around that I’m using a Force-breaker.”

Lana wrinkles her nose. “Not just the Jedi. The Council banned them for a reason.”

“The Council banned Force-breaker toxins-” she rolls her eyes and even that small motion makes the world spin- “because they’re afraid of what people like me would do if we had them. But that’s beside the point. Second, I’ve finally got a lead on the Alderaan staging site we discussed last week. It won’t be actionable for a month, though, and I need to-” she pauses. She needs to figure out what the fuck she’s going to do. Research first, she supposes: she thought Galen had retired after that business with Malgus but his new rank certainly suggests otherwise- had he gone back voluntarily? That might be something she could use. “I can’t delegate that, either. So if we hear anything more from Voss before-”

“I was going to save that news until we got back to Odessen, but I did hear from our Gormak friends. Apparently their visions have coalesced.” Lana says the last word like she wants to spit it out- for all her Sithness she always was a skeptic, with little faith in the prophecies and mysticism that drove some of her peers, and she seemed to find the Voss- and Gormak, by proxy- particularly maddening. “We have a timeline.”

Theron’s already poured himself a mug of caf and pauses mid-sip with it still raised to his mouth. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“It’s... not an ideal timeline.”

“Nine needs to rest, Lana. How not ideal?” He frowns.

She reaches out for her own mug; Theron fills it unprompted and she curls her fingers around it. The warmth, at least, she can feel.  

Lana slumps into her seat. “Twelve days. I tried to argue it, but the-”

“She has a broken wrist. There’s no way she’s going to-”

The headache hits her like an icepick to the temple- ah, concussions- and she winces, closing her eyes as they bicker back and forth. “Would both of you,” she snaps, “please shut up and let me speak?”

They actually do.

“Twelve days. We’re- what, four days from Odessen now?”

“Three and a half,” Lana says quietly. “And I’ve mapped a route back to Voss that uses some of the Imperial hyperspace lanes. We could get there in six days, I think. Possibly faster, with Theron piloting.”

Theron hums idly under his breath, the way he always did when he was doing calculations in his head. “Giving us two days’ turnaround- maybe three. Not enough.”

“I’ll manage.” The moment the words leave her mouth she hears them both sigh; she makes a face at them, tongue sticking out. “Hush. I’ll spend the rest of the trip home in the tank, and I’ll check in with Doctor Lokin once we’re there. I’ve gone back into the field sooner after worse.”

“We can still refuse. Visions notwithstanding, if you aren’t ready-”

“I’ll be ready, Lana.” Does she really have a choice? “Tell the Gormak to expect us.”

(There are many ways to hasten the healing process. She sees his outline on the backs of her eyelids, brilliant white against the darkness. Good as new in hours, rather than days or weeks- better than new. Stronger. Quicker. I could-

Pass. Go away.

Valkorion chuckles and something’s hiding beneath the laughter, dark and creeping and ugly for all his sleekness and his gleaming armor. Look at you. Broken by a mere exarch. My children are going to kill you, little Cipher. And I may very well let them.)

“Nine?” When she blinks back to herself Lana’s biting her lip, eyes narrowed. “Was that-”

“It’s nothing- more color commentary as per usual. I’m fine.”

They look at each other across the table, Lana and Theron with matching expressions- she’s not fine, of course she isn’t fine and they all know that but no one wants to be the first to say it. Saying it out loud makes it real. Instead, they turn to each other.

“Send me the route.” Theron finishes off his cup and pours himself another. “I’ll look at it tonight and see if I can shave a little more time off.”

“Of course.” Lana’s datapad rings metallic against the tabletop as she pulls it from its pocket in her tunic. “Transmitting now. But- oh, Force, never mind. The rest of it can wait until later. What was it that you wanted to discuss?”

“I- um.” Clearing his throat, Theron fidgets in his chair until the seat creaks beneath his restless weight.

Poor Theron.

“Several days ago,” she begins so he doesn’t have to, “Theron became aware of a complication of his recent trip to Coruscant that we- and by we I mean I- are going to have to deal with.”

Lana nods. “I assume you’re referring to Agent Balkar?”

“Only indirectly. That he was there at all was a particularly bizarre coincidence, true, but that wasn’t the complication.” If only it were that simple. “To be frank, we probably owe him a favor. He was the one who told Theron about the death mark.”

“The what.” It isn’t a question. Hands folded, Lana’s holding on to herself so tightly that her knuckles blanch. “How did we get from a failed recruiting trip to a- and who in the Void placed the mark? With whom?”

Theron glances at her out of the corner of his eye; she rests her hand on his. “Do you want me to-?”

“No. I was the one who fucked it up,” he says. “You shouldn’t have to make excuses for me. We lied to you, Lana, but Nine did it because I asked her to. It wasn’t a recruiting trip. I went to Coruscant to ask my father for a favor.”

Lana’s expression barely changes, just the faintest hint of hurt in the set of her mouth and the line of her shoulders. “You told me you didn’t know who Theron’s father was, Nine. Or was that a lie as well?” Oh, hells. They should have told her sooner. If they can’t trust each other-

Theron shakes his head vehemently. “She didn’t. I promise she didn’t. Not until it went bad.”

“An understatement, I think,” Lana snaps. “But even so, why would your own father-”

“Jace Malcom is my father.”

(Is this the first time he’s said those words out loud? She wonders. She thinks so.)

Theron slouches lower into his chair, staring at the tabletop and carefully avoiding returning either of their gazes- her own cast sideways in quasi-apology, Lana’s an open-mouthed stare- until she taps one of his fingers with hers; his focus shifts toward the motion and she traces out a clumsy message. It’s okay.   He doesn’t look at her, doesn’t move, but the frown lines across his forehead soften.

Clearing her throat, Lana finally breaks the silence hanging over the room. “Somehow I feel as though I ought to say I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am.” He sighs. “Maybe I should start at the beginning.”

***

The caf pot’s empty by the time he finishes, an uneven split: three cups to Lana instead of her usual tea, more than enough that a fine tremor settles into her hands by the middle of the second, and two for Theron plus half of her own. (She managed a few scant sips before her stomach started to turn; she’d pushed it away with a grimace and Theron paused in his storytelling long enough to fetch her a glass of water instead. She always knew when she was really hurting, she’d used to say, when she couldn’t keep her caf down.)

“So.” Lana licks her lips. “Jace Malcom, your father, believes you’re a traitor to the Republic, Marcus Trant wants you dead, and both of them think Nine somehow brainwashed you into defecting.”

“That’s it in a nutshell, yeah. I probably should have expected it, but… y’know. Family, right?” Rubbing his eyes and then pushing his hair back from his face- it’s a mess, flopping across his forehead; then again her own’s a mess of knots from floating and Lana’s got circles beneath her eyes so dark they look like bruises- Theron smiles wryly.

“I can’t say I do. It would figure, though- all those years spent making sure my work couldn’t be traced back to me, and I end up taking the blame for something I didn’t even do.”

That gets a laugh out of both of them, at least, if only a small one, before Lana opens a new window on her datapad. “We’ll need to put new security measures in place, of course. I have a few suggestions, I think, if you haven’t already-”

“Not so many. Theron knows how to watch himself, though we’ll need a hard lockdown,” she says, “the day after our retun- no one outbound without proof of orders. If any of Trant’s people have made it to Odessen he’s going to need to call them back, and they’ll do one of three things.” She counts off each one on her fingers. “Least likely, they’ll stay undercover. That’s a long game and the SIS is spread thin enough that he can’t afford to keep too many eyes on us. Marginally more probably someone will make an attempt against orders. Suicidal, but if they hate us that much… but they’re probably going to try to slip the net, and we’ll need to be ready.”

Eyebrow raised, Lana stops taking notes. “Why would he call them back? He doesn’t know that we know, correct?”

“No. But he’s going to.”

“And you think that’s enough to make him cancel the mark? When I was Minister I had the misfortune of having to negotiate with that man more than once, Nine, and I’ll tell you from from experience: he isn’t going to back down because you ask him nicely.”

She bares her teeth in a slow smile. “You ought to know me better than that by now. I’m not planning on asking nicely.”

“Then what-”

“I’m going to blackmail him.”

Lana blinks. Pushing back out of her chair, she walks wordlessly around the table and taps the access panel beside the door and when it slides open she simply leaves the room.

Theron raises one hand, opening his mouth to speak. She shushes him and listens instead to Lana’s quiet footsteps in the corridor, a cabinet opening- the middle one in the shared mess by the way it squeaks- and the clink of glass and then more footsteps, louder, returning. When Lana enters the room once more she’s got a half-full bottle of whiskey clutched in one hand and a particularly disgruntled expression on her face; she retakes her seat, pulls the stopper free of the bottle, and pours a generous portion into her coffee cup before draining the whole thing at a go.

“All right.” Lana coughs. “Now I’m ready. Say that one more time.”

***

It’s not a good plan. She knows that. It’s probably a terrible plan.

It’s all they’ve got.

She wobbles when she tries to get up. They’ve sat talking too long and her head hurts and her wrist hurts and she could probably sleep for a month and it wouldn’t be enough (even if she just spent five years in stasis- but she wasn’t sleeping then, she was dying.) When she has to stop to brace herself against the wall for the third time in a dozen steps, Theron lifts her up, her arm around his neck.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get you back to medbay.”

She wrinkles her nose. He’s right, of course, but that doesn’t mean she has to like it. “Are you sure you two don’t need me to-?”

“Believe it or not, we can occasionally plan things on our own.” Lana- slightly more relaxed now thanks to the whiskey- points toward the door. “Theron and I will start work on this in the morning. For now, you need to recover and the rest of us need to rest.”

Theron nods, steadying his grip on her. “I’ll put a few things together once I’ve got Nine set up the tank. We can talk after-”

“You will not.” She rests her head on his shoulder. “Lana, make sure he sleeps. If he doesn’t, shock him and throw his jacket out the airlock.”

“She wouldn’t dare.”

Lana wiggles her fingers in Theron’s direction. “Don’t be so certain. Now go.”

Careful not to jostle her, he carries her down the hall and around the corner to the medbay, sets her down on the examining table while he gets the kolto tank set up for her next round. For better or for worse he’s an expert at running it now and after a few keystrokes it chimes softly, soft blue light illuminating the base.

“Tank’s ready if you are.” He turns back toward her but she’s only half-listening, attention drifting over to the scanner and the readout still scrolling across its screen.

“I’m not. But I know that doesn’t matter.“ Pulling off the wrist splint, she sets it down beside her. “Will you download a copy of that scan to my datapad? I want to show it to Lokin.”

He nods. “He’s already got it. We needed to make sure we hadn’t made things worse while we were trying to set your wrist- Force knows I’m a lousy medic when it comes to anything beyond medpacks and suturing. But if you want a hard copy I can-”

“No,” she yawns. “Never mind.” She slips her shirt off next, one-handed. There’s no rule against clothing in a kolto tank but no point in dirtying what she’s wearing, either, and she’s used to it this way; in the infirmary at school and in Intelligence training and even in the clinic at headquarters it was always the same with any major injuries. Kit off, my girl. Let’s get a look at you.

It wasn’t a bad thing in retrospect, not for her. It was only a body, after all, not something shameful to be covered up, and by her teens she could have- and did, once, thanks to a senior class prank that left the whole lower sixth with nothing but their identification badges and a single hand towel each with twenty minutes before the midyear examination began- walked naked through the Academy halls with her head held high. (She’d brought the towel, but only because she drew the line at sitting bare-assed in a hard plastic chair for the entire exam. Two-thirds of the class refused to leave the dormitories; the maestra failed them all.

She had the top mark.)

Theron helps her down. “Pants off too?”

“You know me too well.” His fingers hook into her waistband and she wriggles just a bit to help ease the fabric down over her hipbones. Ungraceful, still off-balance, she lifts one foot and then the other clear. “Though I’m afraid it’s all tease and no payoff tonight.”

His hands rest carefully on her waist as he straightens up, a kiss pressed feather-light to her forehead. “I don’t mind a rain check,” he murmurs. “The best things are worth waiting for.”

“Flatterer.”

“Not flattery when it’s true.” And then he helps her up into the tank, up over the lip of the base until she’s standing securely within it, and keys in the final sequence. The glass surround slides shut, closing her in as the seals engage; the kolto starts to bubble up through the ports, covering her feet, her ankles, up to her knees and then her waist and then her chest-

She hates this part.

In and out. In and out. She slows her breathing. The kolto reaches her chin.

Theron presses his hand to the glass. Just breathe- she can’t hear him but she can read the words on his mouth- I’ll be here when you wake up.

She nods, lifting her hand to match his. I know. Now go to sleep-

The last syllable cuts off when she inhales and the kolto fills her mouth, covers her head and she can’t breathe, oh Void (every single time she should be used to it by now but she’s choking and she’s going to die in here and-)

It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay. He pauses a moment. The kolto’s kicking in; her vision goes hazy. I l-

Her eyes close as the sedatives take her.

***

Another three days gone.

By some miracle- Theron could be impressively persuasive when he set his mind to it- Lana seems almost convinced of the plan by the time they land. More than that, between the two of them they’ve drafted a security protocol that might actually work and that they probably ought to have had in place all along: while their ragtag rebellion needs all the help it can get, they all admit they haven’t been screening newcomers with any particular scrutiny.

They can’t afford to scare recruits away. For so many of them Odessen is hope despite the war, despite the threat of Arcann and his fleet arriving any day, hope that maybe they can win this after all and the galaxy can go back to being what it was or maybe something even better. They need that hope.

But she’s not a general, not a Lord or a chancellor or a queen. She’s a spy.

If they’re going to make her be the former, she can keep them all safe as the latter, too.

***

Doctor Lokin’s sitting at his workbench when she reaches his little room at the back of the lab.

Though he was officially assigned to Military Strategy (much as Aygo would prefer it they can’t stay entirely aboveboard all the time, and Eckard was as sly as they came, half of his record a black box of redacted text even to her) he spent much of his time in the science wing; he’d only partially recovered from his near-permanent transformation, his cancers stabilized but still more than enough to keep him out of the field for good. In between strategy sessions it was one experiment after another, one more chance at a cure.

She owes him that, after everything he did for her.

He looks her over quickly, glancing at the splint still on her wrist and the almost-faded bruises beneath her eyes that had been such a shock when she finally made it to a mirror. “Cipher. How are you feeling?”

“Like I had a console dropped on me a week ago? I’ve had worse.” A timer on the benchtop beeps. “I need you to check a few things, but if now isn’t convenient-“

“The wheel of research turns ever over,” he says, and smacks the timer until it quiets. “One moment.” Raising an autopipette over a row of racked test tubes, he adds a single drop of liquid to each one and they start to glow a violent shade of neon green. “There we are. You have my attention.”

Is the rack vibrating? Oh, dear. “You saw my initial scan, yes? I need you to look at my wrist again.”

Lokin nods, rolling back from the bench. “Not healing as expected? Remember, the neuropathy might take weeks-“

“That’s the problem. It’s healed- bone and nerve. I could use another day or two to knit the fracture a little more before I starting training on it, but it feels perfectly normal.” He raises an eyebrow as she hands him a datacard. “This is from this morning. 144 tank-hours since injury.”

The casters of his chair rattle across the floor tiles as he moves to a console tucked into one corner. The card slots into an empty port with a click, the first images of the scan loading one by one until a cross-section of her left hand and wrist fill the screen.

“Good callus formation,” Lokin murmurs. “Appropriate to tank-hours. The compression on the neurovascular bundle’s been reduced, of course, so I would expect to- hm. Let me cross-reference.” He opens another file- her previous scan, the one they’d sent from Nightshrike - and lays the sections atop each other. He squints.

He squints again.

“Stay here.”

She does. It never did do well to ignore doctor’s orders. A few minutes later he wheels a small cart into the lab, a screen mounted on its top and a tangle of wires dangling beneath. Lokin gestures to her wrist, to the splint hidden beneath her shirtsleeve.

“Brace off, sleeve up, and bring that extra chair with you.” He taps a clean corner of the workbench. “Hand here, please. Don’t move.”

Staying still for the cleansing swab’s easy. Staying still for the needles is slightly harder but she exhales (her tattoo was far worse- this is just a few little pokes, sharp stings before the pain eases) as he connects the leads to the taped-down electrodes, testing, testing, testing and then looking to the screen and testing again.

“It’s normal,” she says, “isn’t it?”

“Very nearly. Ninety-five percent of your baseline-” he unclips the wires- “which is remarkable in and of itself given what I would have expected from your scans, and even more remarkable given that your best measurement since the incident on Corellia was eighty-eight percent. Pre- and post-carbonite.”

Pulling the needles out one by one, beads of blood well up in their places as she sets them on the countertop. Odd that the sight of her own blood is reassuring, that’s there’s still something of herself in her own body to go with the ghost in her brain and the spirit- AI, projection, whatever the fuck he is- in her spine-

She looks up. “Eckard, I need to ask you something and it’s very important that you’re honest with me. My spinal implant, the one that Watcher X installed- you told me a long time ago that it was inactive. Are you absolutely certain?”

He sighs.

Oh, Void.

“I suppose that would depend,” he begins carefully, “on one’s definition of inactive."

***

He only meant to keep her safe.

He only meant to keep her safe.

If she’d known it, at her lowest when she was afraid of losing control again more than she was afraid of anything else, she might have done something foolish. She would have done something foolish. She would have-

(My job was- is- to keep you alive, Cipher. Alive and fighting. And if I had to lie to accomplish that then so be it.)

She knows. She-

***

She locks herself inside the sub-basement storage room and screams herself hoarse.

Fuck, fuck, FUCK-

***

If they hear it in her voice at dinner that night neither Lana nor Theron say anything at all.

But Theron brings her honey-sweetened tea instead of her usual caf that night and the tea is one of Lana’s blends; she knows it by its scent. Curling up on the couch, she holds the cup between her hands and sips at it slowly. The splint has to stay another few days- she promised Lokin at least four hours in the tank tomorrow and the day after, before they leave again- but the heat’s pleasant on her fingertips and the tea’s heavily spiced, pleasantly tingly on her tongue.

“Everything’s ready for tomorrow.” Theron sits down on the bed, his duffel at his feet. They’ve only been back on Odessen for twelve hours and it feels like years with all the work already done; they’ve barely had time to breathe, let alone see to mundanities like unpacking or laundry or operational reports. “Hylo had a lot of questions I couldn’t answer but she’s on board. We’re going to need a half-dozen barrels of Alderaanian ale, though.”

“Do what you need to, and forward me the invoice. I’ll take care of it.”

He flops back, staring up at the ceiling. “I don’t even want to move. Wake me up next year?”

She doesn’t want him to move, either. His quarters might not be safe despite the extra hallway cameras, for one thing. They wouldn’t have stopped her, once upon a time, and she knows he thinks she’s being paranoid but she can’t shake the feeling that something’s moving around them in a pattern she can’t quite see yet. “Go to sleep, then. I don’t mind.”

“I know, but I’ll probably go straight through until morning at the rate I’m fading here. Plus, I still need to haul this thing back downstairs.” His foot connects with the bag as he kicks at it blindly. “Gotta hang up that fancy jacket you bought me before it gets wrinkly.”

“Just hang it up here, Theron,” she rasps- ugh. Another sip; she clears her throat. “There’s more than enough room. And it’s leather. It doesn’t wrinkle.”

“Semant-” Theron rolls onto his side, angling his body so he can look down the stairs to see her. “Wait. Now I have a toothbrush and closet space?”

She makes a face at him. “You know what I mean. If you don’t want to stay-”

“Of course I want to stay. I just-” He sits up. “Is this just for now, until we get this thing with the mark worked out, or-?”

A very good question.

She wants him to stay. Stars, she wants him to stay. Her dreams are better with him close, still restless but somehow bearable, and that alone might be enough to keep her sanity in all this mess. But if what they are- another good question she only knows how to answer as she did a week ago, a ferocious mine through gritted teeth- still needs to be kept secret-

Curling in tight, she tucks her knees up to her chest. “That’s up to you. I don’t want to make things more difficult for you than they already are.”

“Do you want me to stay?”

(She doesn’t know how to do this, not when it’s true. But it can’t be that hard, can it?) “Yes,” she says. “I do.”

Theron gets up, a yawn barely hidden behind his smile, and comes back down to her; he settles in beside her on the couch, arm around her shoulders, until she’s nestled in against him. “Then I’m not going anywhere.”

*** Author’s Note: this wasn’t where this chapter was supposed to end. But seeing how that part’s still fighting me six weeks on (and three 50+ hour workweeks in there didn’t help), we’ll wrap up here and deal with a certain SIS director next time…

[myurbandream]

Sentinel Wars(3/?)

Thanks to all the lovely people who left comments and asked me about this little plot bunny…  I have written more.

On AO3 | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3:

~

Rex sticks close to Kenobi for the rest of that first duty shift. (And the following shift as well, because apparently Kenobi is a crazy person who works through his down-time and probably never sleeps. Now Rex knows where Commander Skywalker gets his bad habits from.)

Those twelve hours are the worst control Rex has ever had over his senses since he first manifested as a Sentinel. It takes every ounce of his self-control not to get lost in his head. All of his senses are clamoring for his attention, constantly focusing in on Kenobi’s scent, his voice and his breathing and the blood rushing in his veins, the shine of his eyes and the pale-on-pale tracery of scars on his hands. Barely an hour since he synced to Kenobi and Rex finds himself fighting the urge to tuck his nose under the fall of copper hair at the back of the Jedi’s neck and lick-

(mobile users, there’s a cut here…)

After that, Rex looks for the first opportunity to take Kenobi by the elbow and shove him into the nearest empty conference room.

“Captain, what-”

“Just-”  Rex fumbles, putting both hands up to grip Kenobi by the shoulders.  “Just hold still.”

He closes his eyes, finds the tang of disinfectant on the floor to anchor himself to reality, and lets go of his hearing.  It’s always been his strongest sense, and it’s the one aggravating him the most right now.  He keeps that sharp chemical scent at the forefront of his mind and allows the gentle thump of their echoing heartbeats to pull him under.

Finally free to wander, his brain starts cataloging: this is what Kenobi’s breathing sounds like, the beat of his heart and the rumble of his stomach.  This is the sound of his clothes against his skin, the susurration of his tunics as he shifts position, the brush of hair along his collar…

~

Obi-Wan isn’t entirely sure what Rex is doing, but there’s an extremely strange floaty feeling coming from his new connection to the Captain’s mind.  His emotions have gone blank and soft, quieter even than a dreaming mind produces - it’s almost like the clone is sedated or unconscious.  Obi-Wan has only felt that kind of emptiness from people in medical beds.

He doesn’t like it.

Obi-Wan reaches out across the empathic bond and nudges at the Captain’s mind, trying to wake him up.

Rex jumps like he’s been doused in cold water.  His eyes fly open and his hands clamp onto Obi-Wan’s shoulders.  A string of Mando'a expletives leaves his mouth, and: “Don’t do that!  Uh, sorry, sir.”

“No, sorry, I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan apologizes, waving his hands uselessly in the space between them.  “I didn’t mean to startle you.  Your mind went away and it was… uncomfortable.”

“Kriff,” the Captain swears, letting go of Obi-Wan’s arms to rub his hands over his face.  “You felt that?  How do you feel-  Nevermind, don’t answer that right now.  I want to know, but…  Later.”

“Alright,” Obi-Wan nods, filing a mental note to discuss their empathic connection after his shift ends tonight.  “Then what are you doing right now?”

“I’m trying to finish syncing with you,” Rex explains, with not a little frustration.  “Whatever happened at the briefing, it’s not usually like that, at least not with us clones.  It takes time to sync to someone, and I think, despite… this,” he waves one hand between them, “whatever this is, it isn’t complete.  I still need to finish the process.”

“Alright.”  Obi-Wan mentally files that away as well, one more question to ask Plo or Quinlan or another Jedi about, as soon as he gets the chance.  “What does that mean for right now?  In layman’s terms, please.”

“I need to deliberately get stuck on you, at least once with each of my senses.”  Rex glances at the chrono on his wrist guard.  “It’s gonna take time, and I know you have work to do, but we’ve got to at least start the process or I’m at risk of an uncontrolled zone-out.”

Obi-Wan frowns thoughtfully.  “It’s better to initiate it yourself in a controlled manner than put it off until it happens on its own?”

“You make it sound like a forest fire,” Rex says, smiling faintly.  “But yes, that’s basically it.  I need to focus one sense on a specific, present object, something to keep me anchored, and then let another sense fixate on whatever it wants - which at the moment is you.  That’s how syncing works.  The whole point is that I’m automatically tuned into you, so that if I get lost somewhere else I can find my way back to you.”

Obi-Wan manages not to twitch, but it’s a near thing.  That sounds… intimate.  He gives himself a mental shake and forcefully refocuses on the conversation.

“What I did just now, to wake you up,” he says, thinking of how Rex had startled free from that floating blankness at his mental poke.  “Would that be helpful or harmful to do again?”

Rex pauses, giving the question due thought.  “It definitely pulled me out of focus,” he muses, biting his lip for a moment.  “If I’m zoned out unintentionally, it would be the fastest and most effective way to anchor a Sentinel that I’ve ever heard of.  If I space out during a battle, that could literally save my life.  But if I’m using my senses deliberately, you could break my concentration just when it’s critically needed.”

“So it depends on the situation.  If I’m not there with you, or at least on comms with you, I won’t be able to tell whether you’re dangerously distracted or deliberately focusing on something.”  Now that is problematic, incredibly so.  Obi-Wan rubs at his beard absently.  He can’t see an easy solution.  It’s a worry for later tonight, though.

“For right now, then, what should I do?  What do you need?”

“Right now I need to work on syncing with you, properly, not that… instantaneous thing that happened during the briefing.  I need to get lost in my senses, one at a time, with you as the focal point.” Rex explains.  His brows furrow as he pauses, thinking.  “But… since you can apparently pull me out of my head at the first sign of rain, maybe I can speed up the process a little.  I think…”  He falls silent, staring into the middle distance for a moment, and Obi-Wan feels his mind ticking away lightning-fast across their bond.

“Yeah, I think it’ll work,” Rex decides.  “I’m going to do all five senses at once.  I can’t anchor myself that way, so you’ll have to pull me out of it like you did just now, but it means I don’t have to take the time to do each sense individually.  I’ll go under all at once, and you give it a count of five minutes or so, and then snap me out of it.”

“Are you sure that’s safe?”  Obi-Wan doesn’t like how risky this idea sounds.  It seems a lot like the Sentinel equivalent of learning to free-fall by jumping off the North Tower at the Temple.

Obi-Wan hated that class.

“Not a clue.”  Rex grins with all his teeth, and it reminds Obi-Wan very much of Cody’s predatory smirk right as they closed in on the Separatist forces on Christophsis.  “But honestly, to do this properly we’d need at least forty-eight hours in seclusion, and we don’t have time for that.  I’m improvising.”

“No wonder Anakin likes you,” Obi-Wan sighs.  “Alright.  I’m setting a timer.  Five minutes exactly.”  He taps through the functions on his wrist comm, setting it to beep at him when the allotted time is up.  Then he silences his comm calls, just in case.  If anyone really needs him, they can hunt him down physically using his comm’s location tracker.  “Ready when you are.”

Counter to his earlier brashness, Rex suddenly looks hesitant.  Obi-Wan almost doesn’t want to ask, but: “Is there a problem, Captain?”

“Something you should, uh… I should point out that taste is one of the five human senses.  Sir.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes dart down to Rex’s mouth entirely without his permission.  “Ah.  Yes.  What, um…?”

“Just your hand,” Rex blurts, twitching before visibly holding himself still.  “If I could…”

Obi-Wan removes one of his gloves and offers up his empty hand, trying to stay relaxed and pliant.  Rex cups both his palms under the back of Obi-Wan’s hand and steps closer, a little to the side, rotating Obi-Wan’s arm at the elbow so he can bring Obi-Wan’s bare wrist up to his face, pressing his nose to the skin at the edge of Obi-Wan’s tunic sleeve.

Rex inhales deeply, his eyes fluttering half-shut and locking with Obi-Wan’s gaze, holding them together.  Obi-Wan tamps down hard on his instinctive reaction to that expression.

“Yeah, that’ll work,” Rex murmurs, a deep bass rumble appearing in his voice.  His breath is warm on Obi-Wan’s skin, making the hairs on his arm stand up under his sleeve.  “Start your timer.”

Then Rex presses his open mouth to Obi-Wan’s wrist, the tip of his tongue brushing skin, and Obi-Wan’s mind goes temporarily blank right along with Rex’s.

Obi-Wan fumbles for the button on his wrist comm.  This is going to be the longest five minutes of his life.

~

After a long moment of existence without time, only sensation, Rex surfaces up from his senses like a bubble floating to the top of a pool of water - more gently than he can ever remember doing before.  Normally, getting pulled out of a sense-trap is a shock to the system, breaking his concentration as forcefully as possible.  But this feels like… like waking up on a rare rest day as a kid, with no alarms, just the quiet return of awareness of the world outside his mind.

Rex blinks and closes his mouth, lips dragging over the pale skin of Kenobi’s wrist, and realises just then that they haven’t moved at all.  He lets go of Kenobi’s hand and drops his eyes in the same moment, stepping back and swallowing down his embarrassment.

He feels about a thousand times better, more focused, more in control of his senses.  A little embarrassment is worth it.

“Thanks,” Rex murmurs.

“Did that help?”  Kenobi asks, watching him carefully.

Rex nods.  “What did you do to wake me up?  It was different than the first time.”

“Waking up is a good metaphor,” Kenobi muses.  “When you focus on your senses to that extent, it feels like you’re unconscious, or lightly dreaming.  So I… I just pushed you towards consciousness, like waking up, just… gently.”  He gives Rex a hopeful look.  “Was that better?”

“For a deliberate zone-out, absolutely.”

“Then I’ll be sure to do so again in the future for similar circumstances.”

They stare at each other for a moment, silently evaluating the experience.  Almost as one, they nod and turn together for the door of the conference room.

As they step into the corridor again, Kenobi puts a hand on Rex’s arm, holding him still for a moment.

“If you need another moment, to center like that again, or just a moment of quiet, or anything else,” Kenobi waves his other hand expansively.  “Don’t let it fester.  I could feel your frustration building.  Just tell me what you need and I’ll make it happen.  Alright?”

“Yes sir,” Rex says.

Kenobi raises one eyebrow eloquently.

“Yes, Guide Kenobi.”  Rex tips his own eyebrow right back.  If Kenobi isn’t in charge of him when it comes to Sentinel matters, then Rex can call the man whatever the hell he wants.

“Better, I suppose.”  Kenobi sighs with elaborate exasperation, but he’s just barely smiling as he turns and walks away down the corridor.  The Jedi has a good sabacc face, and another brother might not notice, but Rex is synced to him now, at least partly.  He can see the minute flickers of Kenobi’s pupils, the twitch of muscles in his cheeks.  He knows what a suppressed smile looks like.

Being a bonded Sentinel isn’t anything remotely like Rex thought it would be.  He’s not sure how it’s going to work out - the connection between them is only hours old - but it’s been interesting so far.  Good, really, even with the constant surprises.  He’s looking forward to finding out where it goes.

~ to be continued??? ~

[archiveofolives]

Ring of Keys and Other Stories VI

A/N/SUMMARY fun fact: i finished the first draft of soulmate/soulbond in a day. which should tell you that i feel very nice about this fic and it’s my favorite bc of that. set in yavin 4 between eadu and scarif in the canon timeline. inspiration also comes from one of my most favorite films and love stories of all the love eterne (whose influence is also in the last fic if you know where to look)

RATING/WARNINGS pg or smth idk/n/a

WORD COUNT 3,484

AO3 here

—

The hangar bay was empty. There were no technicians, no rebels, no ragtag crew standing around, screaming and shouting at each other near the cargo shuttle they’d commandeered from Eadu. After the long journey from Jedha, after the life and death situations they’d put themselves through, there being no other path to take, the silence and the emptiness were suddenly so jarring. That was the point that Baze realized that an empty hangar bay with an empty cargo ship with no soul to speak of was the picture definition of depressing.

How apt that he should choose this point in his life to philosophize when he’d pretty much lost what was equivalent to everything. His past, his home. About the only reasons why he was still standing on his own two feet were Chirrut Imwe and the rebel crew they were suddenly a part of. So did that make those idiots his friends?

Baze chuckled suddenly, but they weren’t as bad as they looked; the captain turned out to be competent, his droid the same, the girl managed to earn his respect and even the pilot hid a little fire in himself. People like that, he could learn to appreciate.

Besides, Chirrut seemed to like this dysfunctional group. People Chirrut liked, Baze could learn to like, as well. Where was Chirrut, anyway? Alliance Intelligence—or whoever it was who debriefed them—couldn’t be all that interested in the life of a blind man, could they? Unless they’d made the mistake of asking Chirrut about the Force.

The thought almost made Baze want to laugh if he just didn’t feel so stupid doing it alone where no one else could hear. He decided to wait for Chirrut outside in the hangar bay, exploring its high walls, the panels and screens, and the toys—parts, really, and tools and equipment—lying around, out in the open where they could kill a person, safety warnings be damned. When he’d run out of pipes and plates to knock his fist on, he decided to move onto the open cargo shuttle and tour himself. He was familiar with its interior of course from the days he was away from Jedha. The layout and terminals were all pretty much standard issue (he realized then that the Empire, for all its invasiveness, didn’t quite bother personalizing all their possessions) that he didn’t need more than 10 minutes to reacquaint himself to the ship.

He stepped out. Still no Chirrut. Which volume of the journals was he at now? A deep sigh escaped Baze as he wandered over to a heavy turbine on its side that must be about his height, propped atop two ridged transformers that must be big enough to contain a child each. He sat down on one of them where he could best keep an eye on the entrance to the bay. Folded himself forward to get comfortable, praying hands finding his nose and his mouth.

Before he could stop himself, he closed his eyes and started to breathe deeply. In spite of his divorce with the faith, meditation was still a large part of his life. It was a difficult habit to break, having been a part of his daily routine in the days of the Temple, and even as a skeptic, he could find some nugget of peace with himself in it. His red armor wrapped around his collar made it a little difficult to focus, but it could be managed.

Could be forgotten with the rest of the gray hangar, the echoes of footsteps, of distant commands, the fragrance of leaves, of the strange forests that surrounded them, that seemed inescapable. But there he was, floating in the void of his own emptiness, away from the world and alone…

He heard him first before he saw him, as always—like a drop of water that sent a ripple all across his senses and roused him from his deep trance. Baze felt like a statue coming to life after a long century of slumber. His eyes opened to the sound of his steps and the tip of his staff—and true enough, when he turned, he was there, smiling as he would, a female pilot at his side, all but ready to lead this blind man by the hand. Little wonder then that Chirrut should look quite happy and amused. He felt the familiar tugs of his own smile knocking on his cheeks but self-consciousness squashed that like a bug. The flush of relief was an entirely different species, though, and he permitted himself that much.

He folded his arms on his lap while he watched his friend’s progress. The woman caught sight of him, then.

“Oh your friend’s here,” she announced. She was young, idealistic by the tone of her voice.

“I know,” Chirrut assured her. Then with a theatrical whisper that was meant to be carried out to the audience, he leaned to the pilot and explained, “I can smell him from here.”

“I heard that!” Baze snapped.

The pilot looked like she was caught between laughing and blushing but she powered through. “Can you find your way from here? He’s just straight ahead.” She even pointed to Baze on the occasion that the blind man could see her.

“I can do straight ahead,” Chirrut assured her pleasantly. “Thank you, Shara.”

She waved to the sightless man and then to Baze who lifted his brow. While she hurried back the way they came, Chirrut started forward with his uneti staff held away at an angle, one end at the ground. Snakes of cables and discarded canisters and valves littered his path but he kicked away those he could and hopped over those he couldn’t. Baze watched with no expression.

Once Chirrut arrived, he stretched out a leg to mark his finish line. The younger man didn’t stop walking until it hit his tummy. A hand wrapped itself around his ankle on instinct lest he overbalanced. Chirrut’s fat cheeks restrained a laughter from within.

“You want to sit? What took you so long?” Baze asked with a frown, shifting aside while Chirrut tested the side of the transformer with one foot, and then the turbine’s frame next to it.

With hardly a breath of warning, he flew in two kicks, turned in the air and landed quite impressively on his ass. “I got lost along the way,” Chirrut answered cheerfully, staff meeting the ground with a sound tap. “It’s a big place and I took the wrong turn.”

“Mhm.”

“Did you see the giant water fountain in the middle of this base? It’s so huge, it’s big enough to fit a full-grown Hutt!”

“I’m sure.”

Chirrut clicked his tongue and frowned. “You’re no fun.”  

Well, Baze was also sure of that.

He clipped Chirrut’s ear between his fingers and yanked it down. Chirrut yelped, catching his ear before it fell off. He started laughing again.

Baze shook his head, smiling slightly at the blind man. “What sort of questions did they ask you?”

“I think they were mostly concerned about whether or not I was a Jedi,” Chirrut said. He frowned after, tilting his head to one side, brows knotted in deep conversation. “Now I wonder if I should have just said yes. I think they were looking to hire me. That would have made a good income.”

“What use is a good income if you’re going to be dead before you spend it?” Baze asked, one brow up again.

Chirrut turned to return to him the same expression. “I guess you haven’t figured that out yet, have you?” Baze responded by jabbing the side of his head with a strong finger. Chirrut grinned impishly. He knew he got him there. “Well, what did they ask you?”

“They were interested about my cannons.”

“Were they looking to hire you for that?”

Baze frowned, the corners of his lips pulled low. He shrugged and said, “Who knows?”

“Well, it’s definitely not for your winning personality.”

Definitely not. Baze smirked and nudged the man beside him. “You know I’m expensive.”

“Sounds just like the thing a jobless man would say.”

This time he snickered with his cheeky partner. When he shoved him sideways next, it was with the fullest preparation of meeting Chirrut’s blocking forearm, which felt not unlike slamming into a wall, even as Chirrut was shaking with laughter. It felt good to be talking like this again—as if the entire galaxy wasn’t about to come down on them, as if they hadn’t been quite literally chased out of their own home. A home they no longer had.

It hit him then that this was the second time they’d lost a home. He couldn’t say which was worse, though. The first time had been harder, but this time, there was nothing and nowhere they could go back to. No street, no rubble, not even a piece of carpet on which to sleep.

He didn’t even know what was going to happen to them from here on out. A leaf in a storm would probably be a good analogy to their present situation. They’d survived Saw’s rebels, they’d survived the Death Star—one of the few who could say that—and they’d survived the Empire and the Alliance on Eadu. Now they were stuck here in Yavin 4 for no other reason than that they were dragged along. They had no choice. It was run or die, sink or swim.

Baze wasn’t one to panic—that had always been one of his greatest strengths even when the galaxy was already giving him every reason to tear his hair off, screaming. But he wasn’t young anymore and he wasn’t getting any younger either. This life of constantly fighting for food, shelter, survival, day in and day out…it wasn’t meant to go on forever. Just when he thought he’d finally figured it out for Chirrut and himself, here comes a death ray destroying everything they’d built. And then they were back to square one again.

He heaved out a great sigh, staring into nothingness. “How did we get here?” he asked, wearily.

He wasn’t really expecting any answer, but apparently questions were part of Chirrut’s expertise. Bless the man really for still finding reason to smile in spite of their circumstances. Head tilted a little towards his partner, he said, “It’s the consequence of being alive.”

That was true, and Baze was glad for it. Being alive meant more days of worrying and fighting but it was far better than being dead and non-existent. In fact, death and non-existence would be far worse. Baze could never do that to Chirrut—leave him alone again to fend for himself in this vast galaxy, just because this time he’d been too slow, too weak, too stupid. Just because he’d failed. Jedha had already given him too many names to pray for, sagging him under their weight. He’d heard him muttering them even in his sleep, on the flight to Eadu from the ruins of Jedha. That was enough.

“What do you think happens now?” Baze asked.

Chirrut shrugged. “Who knows? No one can tell the will of the Force, we can only follow it. The Force led us to the Holy Quarter to rescue Jyn. It brought us to Eadu for the same reason. Now we’re here.”

“So you think we’re all here just to,” Baze was the one who shrugged this time, “protect Jyn?” He nodded to the entrance to the hangar. “She looks like she gets into too much trouble for her own good, but not someone who needs a sitter. Much less two.” Besides, he was already looking after one fool who liked to fling himself headlong into battle. He wasn’t sure he needed another.

“I think we’re here for another reason,” Chirrut said, furrowing his brows, looking like he was inspecting his dangling feet. “The Force brought us to these people for a reason.”

“You saying the Force wants us to join the Alliance?” Baze’s brows flew.

“Not the Alliance,” Chirrut explained quietly. “But the rebellion.”

His meaning was plain to Baze, but the man still found enough reason to pretend that it wasn’t. In all the time they were running and fighting, he never felt that cold hand of dread wrapping itself around his heart. Funny that it should come now, when they were supposed to be safe among friends. Besides, wasn’t this what he’d been dreaming of in the past? A chance to finally bring revenge to the Empire’s doorstep.

“You think…Jyn is going to keep fighting? No matter what the council says?”

Chirrut raised his eyes to look blindly ahead of him. “I know she will.” He had seen through her heart of Kyber.

Well, that was it, wasn’t it? The truth as plain as day. Whatever it entailed, he didn’t know—but Baze knew for sure that he could finally breathe in relief. The uncertainty had lifted, and the inevitable has come. Now he knew what they were going to do. And what he was going to do.

Whatever gave him the idea, he couldn’t say. Probably some childhood tale from all those old holocrons, during the days they were still learning verses. But whatever it was, it made him glad that he kept a piece of blade in one of his many pockets, and that they’d gotten into the habit of salvaging whatever could be reused and repurposed while they still had the chance.

Baze reached back to his wavy, oily locks and carefully snipped off a finger’s width. The crisp sound drew Chirrut’s attention towards him, like a bird turning so suddenly. “What’s that?” he asked, curious.

“None of your business yet,” Baze muttered, looking for something to pin his hair in.

Chirrut nudged him with a toothy grin. “You’re my business.”

Baze eyed him incredulously. “Are you trying to look cute?” he asked. “Now’s an inappropriate time!”

“I wasn’t saying anything like that,” Chirrut said, sulking like a boy and doing well at it. He was always so good at impressions. He made a bed for his chin with his two hands on his staff and pouted at an unseen object.

Baze snorted, shaking his head and smiling slightly. Eventually, he managed to produce a synthetic red cord from one of his other pockets which he tied around one end of his lock of hair, making it easier to knot the rest in a nice and tight braid. Chirrut started humming a song soon after, tapping the heels of his shoes to the transformer in different configurations to provide the beat to his rhythm. Baze always thought that he had a good singing voice, that he could carry a tune.

He was in the middle of a second repeat of the song when Baze finally jumped off to his feet and told him, “Give me your hand.”

“In marriage?” Chirrut asked, jesting. Excitement filled his smile at the opening Baze had walked right into. He sighed, but that only caused Chirrut to grin wider. Baze couldn’t say if the blind fool would ever get tired of these jokes. He didn’t think he ought to, of course. “We’ve been through this a number of times, Baze.”

“We’ve been through this a number of times!” Baze echoed him to agree although their contexts were definitely different from each other. Chirrut held out his left hand anyway, the one without the impeller gauntlet, and Baze draped the length of his braided lock over the back of his wrist. He made a few measurements and a few quick adjustments with the cord and the end knot.

It didn’t take him long to finish the bracelet after, wrapped loosely around Chirrut’s pulse. It was his hair woven and stitched with the cord, locked with a complicated knot he’d learned from the streets. “There,” Baze said, wiping his hands on his suit and putting away the blade and the little that was left of the cord. “Now you can look.”

Look, of course, was a subjective command here. Chirrut’s idea of looking was running his finger down the plaited locks and testing its width. His brows met in intrigue. “This is…” He brought the bracelet to his nose and sniffed the familiar smell. “Your hair!”

“Mhm.”

“This means ‘til death do us part.” The gravity of which was not lost on Chirrut, who stared perfectly straight at Baze in surprise, as if his milky blue eyes had been suddenly cured.

Baze gave him a small smile. “It seems that you know what’s going to happen now, and I think I do, too—but I’m not the one who’s attuned to the Force here.”

“Baze…”

Baze scratched his head briefly, feeling the part where he’d taken his hair. “The point is,” he continued, “and I know this is a redundant symbol, but whatever happens now, what’s important to me is that you’ll always have a part of me with you.” He slid his hands onto Chirrut’s palms and let the man hold him.

Looking at his blind eyes, he said, “I just can’t bear the thought of you alone without me.”

He always loved the kind of smile that Chirrut put on every time he bared his soul and opened up his weakness. It was at once shy, at once comforting, but the entirety of it was drawn by a deity of love. “Stop being silly,” he chided him softly. “When you left, you came back—because there’s no world that can exist without you beside me. The Force brought us together. And what the Force brought together, no creature, no worldly thing can separate.”

He raised a hand and laid it lightly on the side of Baze’s face, stroking his tired skin. Baze wanted to close his eyes and pour himself into the softness but he wanted to look at Chirrut’s face, too. “Where would I be without you? Nowhere. It’s a fallacy, Baze. It simply won’t work.” His smile stretched out wider, and Baze grinned back.

They kissed, Baze pulling his chin towards him, Chirrut’s breath shuddering under his mouth, eager to pour out the same love through his lips. It was mind blowing, an embarrassment towards them, how little they’d shared a kiss since they escaped Jedha. It was no wonder they were constantly so starved for each other whenever they were alone, no matter how long they spent together or how hard they kissed. Damn the Death Star if it thought it could get in the way of all that was good to them. It may take away their home, their family and friends and past—but they would kill it first before they let it separate them permanently.

Baze pulled free with a wet smack and a heavy breath pouring out of his mouth. Chirrut was catching his own heart even as they connected their foreheads to each other.

“No matter what happens,” Baze growled, looking closely at his love, “I’ll never leave you. I promise.”

“You can’t!” Chirrut reminded him, laughing. They kissed again, hands on their cheeks, lips in perfect unity. They kissed sweetly with the bliss of a reunion after such a long parting. Nothing mattered in their little pocket of the galaxy. Not the heat, not the scent of fuel or of alien trees in the forests.

Not the hurrying footsteps and the excitable, “Mr. Malbus, Mr. Imwe!” Sadly, the shouting was an entirely different story altogether.

The end to such a perfect kiss came abruptly, flesh torn so rudely without the last negotiations for more. “I’m sorry! I didn’t know, I didn’t see!” the visitor cried.

It was a rebel at the entrance to the hangar bay, waving his hands to the Guardians while he averted his eyes, as well. Baze looked at him with immense disappointment while Chirrut sighed, head bowed low. “Y, you can forget I’m here,” he insisted stubbornly. “I, I was just looking for the captain—!”

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you how to knock?” Chirrut demanded sharply, using the voice of an angry parent. The rebel started to stammer again but that was only because he couldn’t hear Chirrut gasping for breath and see his cheeks aching from grinning. Baze groaned, ducking under a hand to hide his own mirth from the poor flustered man.

“I, I said I didn’t see it, okay? I didn’t see it!!” Which made Baze wonder what he thought he was seeing. Well, too late for that, Chirrut was already laughing uncontrollably. What a shame. And that had been a very good kiss. Probably the last they’d have in a while.

They’ll get another chance after all this is over. He swore that on all the stars above them.

“A, anyway!” The rebel persisted stubbornly, even though he was blushing like the lavas of Mustafar. “Where’s Captain Andor! They said he was looking for volunteers.”

[ramrodd]

How do I become a member of a squad?

COMMENTARY:

Well, find 3 or 4, but no more than 7, other people who have a common purpose of some sort, however ephemeral, and enter their mythos and accept the natural dynamical socialism of a small unit.

If it is an assigned working squad, such as the FNG in an infantry platoon in a lethal task environment. By then, you will have been trained to keep and to bear arms in a military manner, as guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment. And then the issue becomes becoming a member of the squad. As a weapon system, you should represent a value added voice in the heat of battle. Likability is social strategy, but it is not a necessary dimension of leadership (in a squad, everyone is a leader, like rugby forwards or fire fighters. What is important is important is to present yourself as a serior player and not comic relief. You know how to keep your equipment mission focused and on a hair trigger and how to rock and roll when it comes time to bear arms in a military manner.

Which is not the same thing as showing up at an ammosexual costume ball at the center of the Virginia constitutional government looking for an opportunity to take a shot at Ft. Sumter and let the party begin.

The 2nd Amendment is an invitation to become part of the mythos of the infantry squad. Leave your toys and cammos at home. You’ll get the real thing in the fullness of time.

In the military sqaud, process theology is the common epistemology. In Jungian terms, combat is the ultimate SP experiential life space. When you are walking point, your spine is on pins and needles. I’ve walked point: I am not particularly talented at Point, but I was his fearsome Slack. My vision was never been sufficiently accute before I started wearing contacts to hit a fast ball sinking into my fat spot. The best point people are like Pennsylvania deer hunters engaged in poaching and are either pretrenaturally calm, like Jesus before Pilate, or totally squirrelly as human beings but pure genius on the hunt.

Likability is not a necessary dimension of leadership. It helps take the edge off home life out of the field and back in the barracks, or the firebase or on board the Caine between typhoons and shore leave. Willie and Joe didn’t necessary like each other, but they were a high performing team in combat over a long campaign. Saving the life of an asshole member of the squad comes with the territory. It is part of the Ethos of the infantry squad, as summarized by John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. That’s the nature of valor in the republican socialism of the infantry squad.

The object of the exercise, though, is to accomplish the mission and stay alive until they leave that particular task environment for a venue far less lethal.

Now, Jesus, as the leader of a religious insurgence, enlisted the equivalent of a USMC TO&E rifle squad, 12 players and Jesus, as the leader/player. Jesus is the Jedi knight of the Gospels. Jesus enlists some rookies talented in other fields to set the 2nd Temple on fire. He was the ultimate John Galt in terms of Temple Worship as a viable Jewish social strategy. Jesus did for the Temple social system what Martin Luther did for the Catholic Church, except that Christianity is a sociological demonstration on a cosmic level of the infinite diversity of The One as described in Revelation 4:2, while Judaism bred a re-invention of itself in Islam and is determined to recapture the glory of David and withhold the covenant of Abraham from the uncircumcised.

Any way, the 13 person configuration of the USMC rifle squad, 1 leader/player and 12 players all capable of becoming leader/players if they are the only one left standing, is a numerological confituration that is introduced into the narrative by the dreams of the Pharaoh that Joseph could interpret because Melchizedek had introduce 9 base numerology to Abram and the Pharaoh’s priest were stuck in the Logos of the 8 base numerology that built the pyramids. There were 7 sequential years of plenty and 7 sequential years of famine. In an 8 base system that would amount to 14 years. But in the divine numerology of 19, the first 6 years are plenty, the 7th year, plenty and famine over lap, and then there are 6 years of famine. 13 years is recognizable business cycle in the economics of the Bible. 616, in Arabic numbers of the decimal system we employed to put man on the moon, can be understood as an ideogram in the narrative, like a butter fly in flight, while 166 is the butterfly just emerged from from the crysalis and deying its wings in the warmth of the sun light and 661 is the butterfly at rest after an summer’s afternoon flitting about.

And a 13 person squad is practical for shipboard duty, but awkward for continetal campaigning The Romans employed an 8 person squad composed of two 4 man teams and a centurion controlled 6 or 8 of these. The US Army squad was 11 men when I was in ROTC, composed of the Squad Leader, a Staff Sergeant, and two 5 person fire teams composed of a leader/player and 4 players. What may seem like redundancy is necessary instrumental slack for a combat venue. In Vietnam, I had the Battalion Recon Platoon which was designed for 46 members, including me and my platoon sergeant. I never had more than 22 people present, but my Battalion CO deployed us more than once across what was at least a company front. Like Little Round Top, but with artillery and gunship support. Actual combat tends to whittle down the numbers, but Jesus started out with a USMC rifle squad.

So, as a model of how to become a member of a squad, The Gospel According to Mark is an obvious point of departure.

Personally, Thomas is the only disciple I kind of indentify with, having the same name and disposition, but Cornelius, the centurion featured in Acts 10, represents my perspective from the mythos of the republican socialism of the mission oriented keep and bear arms logos of Duty and the John 15:13 ethos of the combat infantry squad.

The Gospel According to Mark is a portrait of the squad in action.

[inyri]

Equivalent Exchange (a SWTOR story): Chapter 29- What Happens on Nar Shaddaa

Equivalent Exchange by inyri

Fandom: Star Wars: The Old Republic Characters: Female Imperial Agent (Cipher Nine)/Theron Shan Rating: E (this chapter: M.) Summary: If one wishes to gain something, one must offer something of equal value. In spycraft, it’s easy. Applying it to a relationship is another matter entirely. F!Agent/Theron Shan. (Spoilers for Shadow of Revan and Knights of the Fallen Empire.)

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What Happens on Nar Shaddaa Odessen. 21 ATC.

“Sending proof of completion now.” The figure’s distorted voice crackles over the speaker as the projection stutters and flickers above her desk. “As you requested. However, you should be aware there was a complication.”

She sighs.

“Define complication.” Nine pulls up the images, flipping through them idly: the buildings of the ranch now smoldering ruins, the equipment they’d had to leave behind rendered unusable, the rakghoul test subjects-

She wrinkles her nose. They’d had to leave so quickly and there was nothing else to be done with them, of course, no room to bring them to Odessen and the experimental process leaving them unsuitable for return to Taris. Stars know they couldn’t just leave them wandering- they’d have had an epidemic on their hands in no time at all. But seeing them laid out one by one in the pens…

The poison had worked, clearly, a blaster shot to each meant to finish the job but probably unnecessary by the look of the wounds. Clean. Merciful.

Still, it seems a shame.

“Someone sniffing around the complex. Republic military, to judge by kit. He fired on us.” Arms folded, the figure shifts from one foot to the other.“It’s been handled, and he wasn’t looking for you- some rogue SIS agent, according to his datapad- but I’m going to have to insist on a surcharge. Combat and sentient disposal weren’t part of the initial agreement.”

She flips to the last image.

Shit. She should have known they weren’t going to leave Coruscant behind so easily as that. “Fine,” she says. “An additional fifty. Sixty if you send me the contents of that datapad.”

“Two hundred.”

“Oh, fuck off. One dead ‘pub? Seventy-five. Final offer.”

A pause; another voice in the background. And then- “All right. I’ll take the rest of the credits to the same account. Data incoming.”

“Very good,” she says, setting her own datapad down after a few more taps to its screen. “Credits sent. And you can drop the cloak-and-dagger shit, Renzi. I know that’s you.”

“Dunno what you’re talking about.”

She grins. “You said I. Xessa always says we.”

“She’s got you there, Ren. He thinks voice masking makes him sound exotic-” a second figure pops sideways into frame as the masking drops away, Xessa’s green-scaled face a contrast against her partner’s pale pink torso- “but mostly he couldn’t be bothered to put a shirt on. So, where in the Void have you been? We’d heard you were dead.”

“Rumors greatly exaggerated, et cetera.” Shrugging, she lets the unspoken question die. “Excellent job as always. Cleaner work’s not your usual, I know, but-”

“Work’s work nowadays, and with Zakuul’s eyes everywhere business is slow. A payday’s always welcome.” Renzi grins as Xessa straightens up beside him, one arm draped over his bare shoulders. “Though we-” a smirk for emphasis, there- “had hoped you might want to render payment in person. It’s been far too long.”

(A dangerous offer, with far too many pheromones in that room for anyone’s good. She’d fallen into that trap once or twice (or, okay, maybe it was closer to half a dozen times) with those two, back in the old days when one of her many jobs was keeping the Cartel from throwing in with the Republic; the happier she kept the Hutts and their lieutenants, the happier her Intelligence masters had been, and-

Well. It had been a particularly enjoyable trap. Besides, anyone who could sit with a Falleen on one side and a Zeltron on the other and manage to keep one’s knickers on may as well go join the Jedi- that much self-denial couldn’t possibly be healthy.)

“Not this time, I’m afraid. My cargo required urgent transport.” The keypad outside her quarters chimes. Someone’s looking for her; she ought to wrap this up. “Rain check, hm?”

“We’re working in the Core for the foreseeable future. You need us again, come find us and we’ll knock ten percent off the going rate.”

“Only ten?” The door’s chiming again. She pushes back from the desk. “If you’ll excuse me, I ought to get that.”

Xessa winks. “We’d consider fifteen. A pleasure as always, my dear.”

As the holocall disconnects, Nine stands, calling out toward the door. “Just a min-”

It slides open. Theron slips through, wiggling his fingers at her in response to her arched eyebrow. “Don’t get up. I can let myself in.”

“So it would appear. You could have rung in, you know.”

“I did. Twice. When you didn’t answer I assumed you were still in science wing.”

She shrugs. “I was on a call. Lokin’s in the middle of a treatment, so there’s no point in sitting around watching gamma rays- though you’ve just reminded me I should probably change my entry code.”

That he’d memorized her passcode oughtn’t to have been a surprise. She was careful with it, always, but over the last months they’d walked back to her room together for one too many late-night ‘meetings’- of course he’d learned the sequence. She’d expect no less from him; she’d have done the same herself, if they’d ever spent any time in his quarters.

“It took me a while- it’s a good code. Not your birthdate, not a predictable sequence.”

Old habits were hard to break. “It was my identification number at the Academy. I used it a dozen times a day, so it’s easy to remember. But I’d still appreciate a knock.”  

“I thought I’d surprise you.” Theron, wearing a suitably contrite expression (she doesn’t believe it for a minute, but at least he’s halfway pretending to be sorry), holds up an insulated bag. “Figured I owe you dinner after the whole Coruscant clusterfuck. Possibly like a hundred dinners. And some other stuff. But if I’m interrupting-“

He looks down at her datapad, face-up on the table with the last transmitted image still open on the screen, and then back up, frowning.

“I didn’t know,” he says carefully, “that we were going against the Republic now.”

“We aren’t. The team I contracted to mop up on Alderaan ran into-” she gestures delicately with one finger- “this guy poking around. Anyone you know?”

Theron shakes his head. “No, but his gear looks military. Do we know what he was looking for?”

“Files are there. I haven’t had a chance to read them yet, but best guess? You.”

“No way.” Setting the bag on the table and hooking one foot around the chair in front of her, he pulls it toward him, sits down abruptly and reaches out for the datapad. “Coincidence. Must be.”

The transmission’s there, unopened, in one of her dozen Holonet accounts; Theron glances up at her again and, at her nod- he may as well see it, whatever it says- taps the screen. For the next minute he sits in silence, eyes flickering from line to line as he reads, and then he pushes the little screen away and rests his elbows on the projector table, head cupped in his hands.

“Well, fuck,” he says, voice muffled.

She waits.

“You were right. I should have gone to Rhu Caenus for supplies.”

Of course she was. Pallista was far too risky, far too many people who might have known him or might have been told to watch out for him- but there’s no point in gloating. Instead, she rolls her desk chair across the floor and sits down beside him, leans against his side until he turns his head toward her with a sigh.

“In any case,” she murmurs, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck, “it’s handled. The team that killed him doesn’t know who you are or that you were there. Loop closed. We’ll just have to be even more careful moving forward.”

“I should have known he’d do this. But I thought-” Theron closes his eyes. “I thought- I mean, my own father-”

He trails off.

“Sometimes I think you’ve got it easier, not knowing,” he mutters. “Not having to worry about your parents or-”

Her fingers dig in to his skin, harder than she means them to. “Don’t be stupid. Do you really think it’s easier?”

“I only meant that-”

“I don’t even know who they are. They could be anyone at all, or dead, and I’d never know it. I might have walked through the Kaas City market and passed a sister, a brother-” at that, a spike like lightning lances straight through her head and her hands fall to her sides; she grits her teeth to keep from crying out. Oh, she should know better than to think of such things by now, oh, oh-

When she catches her breath and her eyes refocus Theron’s shifted position, sitting up straight, holding her head close against his shoulder.

“And then there’s that, of course. A small side effect,” she says dryly, unembedding her fingernails from her palms with a shudder. “But ignorance is bliss, right?”

“I’m sorry.“ He presses his mouth to her temple, his hand in her hair. “I’m sorry. That looked like it hurt.”

“It does. But one learns to live with it. Or not. After all, it was my choice.” Forcing a smile, she nudges his hand away gently with a tilt of her head, straightening up and reaching across the table for the bag. “Enough philosophy. We should eat before the food gets cold.”

“I-” He stops. “Yeah. Yeah. I remember you mentioned these before, and since I’m probably not going to be able to go Coruscant again for… well, possibly ever- um. Ghedi was due to rotate out of embedment last week anyway, so I had him make a stop on his way to the spaceport. He flash-froze them and I just heated them up in the canteen, so I’m pretty sure they’re still-”

As Theron rambles, she raises the flap and pulls out a few takeaway containers and a chilled bottle of wine; the containers are warm, lids opaque with steam, and when she opens the first of the containers and inhales the smell’s familiar.

This time her smile is genuine. “You seriously had someone bring dumplings all the way back from Coruscant?”

“You said you liked them.”

Did she? She does like them, so he’s right, but when- oh! “When I sent your implant- Theron, that was five years ago. I can’t believe you remembered that.”

“It was the last time we talked before the Zakuul war started.” As she sets the second container in front of him, he gets up to fetch glasses from the cabinet. “I remembered.”

She takes a bite. They’ve suffered a little from the freezing, but Force knows she wouldn’t tell Theron that- he’s watching her intently when he sits back down, fills her wineglass but doesn’t eat, waiting for her reaction and he looks so ridiculously hopeful that they could have been stone-cold and stuffed with rocks and she’d still have eaten every last one. “Best thing I’ve eaten in years-” still actually true, frostburn and all- “and yours are getting cold. Here.”

Holding one up to his mouth as he starts to reply, she pops it between his parted lips.

“You know,” he says around a mouthful of dumpling, “we’ve never actually been out to dinner at an actual restaurant? The mess hall doesn’t count.”

“We’ve been more than a little busy. And Taris isn’t exactly known for haute cuisine.”

“True. But next time we’re back in civilization, I’m buying you dinner.”

She grins, leaning into him to steal a forkful of noodles. “If you’re attempting to bribe your way back into my good graces with food-”

“Is it working?”

“Maybe.” A pause. “Is there cake in there?”

“Is there cake? You wound me.” With a snort, Theron digs down to the bottom of the bag. “Of course there’s cake. Their cake is legendary.”

“Then I forgive you. For now.”

***

She lets him stay that night, too.

She missed him, even in the days it took to get from Alderaan back to Odessen in their separate ships, even with the distraction of Doctor Lokin’s fragile health keeping her in the medical bay almost constantly and having to arrange the cleaner team to cover up behind them (it had been sheer luck that Xessa’d answered her holo and that she and Ren’d been near enough to handle the job- no one from the Alliance was within range, and her first two options had been too far away or too busy to pick up the work.)

She tries to tell herself it’s habit, this thing they have- he’s a craving to be satisfied like any other but somehow still novel even after months together, her want and her affection for him enough to forgive him his recklessness, enough that she hasn’t so much as looked at anyone else in that time which is practically a record-

But when he stirs in his sleep in response to her nightmares, arm tightening around her to pull her nearer, murmuring her name against the nape of her neck, she curls into the warmth of his body and whispers back.

Some habits are worth keeping.

***

The next morning his ringing comm wakes them both a full hour before sunrise and she groans and covers her head with a pillow while he checks who’s calling.

Hang on, he signs, lifting the pillow for a moment. Need to take this.

She nods and pulls the blanket up, just in case- one wrong angle and his caller’s likely to get an eyeful- as he slides quickly into trousers and undershirt and ducks down the stairs to her desk.

“Do you know,” Theron says by way of opening, “what time it is?”

“You said call with the plans.” The answering voice is unfamiliar: female, heavily accented- native language almost certainly Huttese. Hm. She peeks out from beneath the pillow as the voice continues. “Got plans. So I’m calling.”

“And I appreciate it, I do-” he yawns- “but it could have waited an hour. Or five.”

She can’t see a thing from this angle. Ducking beneath the covers until she’s poking her head out at the foot of the bed (the sheets are a mess anyway, half-stripped, kicked off during the worst of her dreams), she tries again. Now she can see Theron, half-perched on her desk chair, and on the holo in front of him a yellow-skinned Twi’lek, a faded Black Sun tattoo on one bare shoulder, stands with her arms folded across her chest and a very smug expression on her face.

“Oops.”

Theron sighs. “I told you I was sorry those SIS guys came after you.”

“Not came after, found. Broke teeth,” the woman scowls. “Again. And stole my gun.”

“I’m paying you for the plans. You should be able to buy, like, ten guns.”

“Liked that one.”  

He settles down into the chair with a thump. “Seriously, Teff’ith. I really am sorry.”

“Happens. They said I’m… um. ‘Known associate?’” She- Teff’ith, not a name Nine recognizes- sounds uncertain, mouth moving to make the shapes of an unfamiliar word. Her Basic’s awful. Not a former work colleague of Theron’s, she’d bet, though she’s got more than her fair share of old contacts with likely similar histories. “Should have given stupid medal back.”

Theron looks sidelong in her direction with a shrug and an I’ll tell you later signed behind his back. “But you got the plans, you said?”

“Yup. Not easy.” The Twi’lek holds up a data chip. “Lots of slicing. But got ‘em.”

“Your account’s still the same?” Theron glances down to his wrist for a moment, but his commpad’s still on the table beside the bed. “Hang on, I need to get my-”

Wrapped up in the blanket, Nine sits up and stretches across until she can reach it; catching his eye again, she mimes tossing it down to him and he nods, reaches up to pluck it out of the air as she lobs it underhanded in his direction. As it crosses the field of the holo’s lens Teff’ith blinks and takes a step backward, eyes darting from side to side suspiciously.

"Who’s there?” Her tone’s even brusquer than before. “Someone else spying, too?”

Letting his breath out with a huff, Theron shakes his head. “No one’s spying on you. You just happened to catch me in the middle of a meeting-” (the age-old excuse, of course, though he keeps a straight face when he says it)- “and the Commander’s here.”

“Let me talk to her.”

Clothing would probably be useful right about now. Last night’s clothes are all somewhere down in the sitting area, though, and the closet’s on the far side of the camera field; she looks around the room for ideas beyond the bedsheet but none spring immediately to mind.

“If it’s about the credits, Teff, I’m sending them right now.” Commpad slipped onto his wrist and his attention on its screen, he taps out a few dozen keystrokes before he returns his eyes to the holo. “You don’t need to-”

If looks could kill, Theron’d be a smoking heap on the floor by now. “You made me get arrested. By your mom."

“You never actually got-”

“It’s fine, Theron.” Both their heads snap in her direction but not the camera yet, thankfully, as she pulls the sheet tight around her chest and runs her other hand through her bed-mussed hair. Draping the blanket over her shoulders- it could pass as a shawl at this angle, right?- she gestures toward the holo. “I assume she’s a friend of yours?”

“That’s one way of putting it. I arrested her, she saved my life- the usual. I’ve been trying to keep her out of trouble ever since.”

Teff’ith snorts. “Saved you twice. You’re welcome.”

“It’s true,” he says, and turns the camera toward her at her nod. “Teff’ith, this is the Alliance Commander. Commander, Teff’ith. Formerly of Coruscant, currently residing on Nar Shaddaa. She managed to get us a copy of the unredacted Ternion building tenant list and schematics.”

She opens her mouth to respond, but before she can get a word out the Twi’lek looks her up and down, at her hair and her bare face and her blanket-wrapped body, and angles her head back toward Theron.

“Never thought you’d leave. Didn’t understand why you did,” Teff’ith grins. “Now I get it. She’s prettier than the wanted holos.”

“I’ll take that,” she says as Theron’s ears go scarlet, “as a compliment.”

***

“I’m sorry.” Half an hour later, even in the lift on the way up to the War Room, he’s still apologizing. “She can be… abrupt. But she’s a good kid.”

“She’s entertaining, I’ll give her that, and I’ll comp you back the credits from the discretionary fund. But she’s hardly a kid.” She scans over the schematics as they hit the top floor- they’re good. More than enough detail. They’ll just need to find their in, now. “She’s how old- late twenties?”

(Somehow they’ve all gotten old while they weren’t paying attention.)

“Something like that, yeah. I’m not sure she even knows. But we’ve known each other a long time. She was there when Ngani- when Master Zho-”

The hallway’s crowded when they step into it, bustling with soldiers and crew heading to their morning duties, and everyone’s looking at them. “Tell me later?”

Theron nods, voice lowered. “It’s a long story. Tonight?”

“Tonight.”

They’ve still got half a slice of cake to finish, after all, and she’s still got the extra toothbrush.

***

With the tenant list projected on one screen and a blueprint on the other, she and Lana and Theron sit staring at the list, crossing out names one by one.

“It seems to be mostly corporate,” Lana says, “as expected. Approaching any of the Republic-owned organizations is out of the question, I assume, so that rules out these five.”

“And these.” Theron crosses out two more. “Off the record, an SIS front and a weapon dev lab for SpecOps.”

She wrinkles her nose. They’re rapidly running out of options. “Wish I’d known that ten years ago. And these four are Cartel, and much as the Hutts want the blockade gone, I doubt they’ll approve of our methods.”

“The twenty-ninth floor looks to be vacant.”

“Right underneath the shield generator? Ten credits says it’s stuffed full of skytroopers.” Stretching, Theron reaches across the table for his caf cup. “What about Omnicorp? Twentieth floor?”

She puts a line through that one, too. “Two words: killer robots.”

“Never mind.” Theron squints, looking harder at the list. “And everything else is Imperial- wait. What about this one?” He traces a circle with one finger around the listing on the mezzanine level. “Umbrella Corporation. That’s got to be a joke.”

“Reminds me of an old friend, actually. Sia’hla. She used to talk about wanting to own a dance club.” Taking a sip of her own caf, she leans her elbows on the table as Lana, beside her, keeps scanning through company dossiers. “I told her she’d be better off running it like an umbrella company- hire girls on as independent contractors, keep the Hutts’ slimy mitts out of the whole business. She was still learning Basic at the time, though, and the phrase doesn’t quite translate into Huttese. She thought I meant she should call it-”

She stops. That’d be too much of a coincidence, surely.

“It is a cantina.” Lana raises one hand, sliding a dossier page on top of the projected list. “An odd choice in an industrial district, don’t you think?”

Theron settles into a chair, focused on the page. “Pretty genius, actually. Bunch of white-collar types working long hours and with money to burn- now they don’t even have to leave the building to drink and chase tail. Whoever owns it must rake in credits hand over fist.”

“Speaking from experience?” She grins as Theron slides down until he can reach her, extending one leg to kick at her ankle.

“Nah. That was Balkar’s thing. I was more the ‘you’ve been here for thirty hours, Shan, now go the fuck home before I have you evicted from your office’ type.”

Lana smirks. “I’d never have guessed.”

“Shut it, Beniko.” Theron flicks his tip of his stylus at her as she leans neatly out of the way, redirecting it back around with a wave of her hand; it hovers over his caf cup for a moment, then drops into the liquid with a splash. “I was drinking that.”

Ignoring him completely except for a soft, amused-sounding hum (Theron, meanwhile, fishes the little rubber piece out when he thinks neither of them is looking), Lana magnifies the line until they don’t have to squint to read it. No individual names or contact numbers, of course; it wasn’t going to be that easy. “It looks to be a clean tenancy as well- no proxy listed. No connection to the cartels at all, so far as I can see. It may be our best chance of getting into the building.”

“I’d prefer not to gatecrash.” She shifts her attention back to the blueprints, to the mezzanine level. “Assuming Ternion’s constructed like most Nar Shaddaa towers, our access to the power conduit will be somewhere back here-” one circle on the map, marking the location- “ well out of the public areas. Not impossible by any means, but we’ll be dodging repair ‘bots all the way up the conduit already. I’d rather not have to worry about security wandering in while I’m dangling a dozen floors up.”

“So, what? We ask nicely and hope whoever runs the place doesn’t mind us blowing the roof off the building?” Theron rubs his forehead.

“One never knows. We might get lucky. But no,” she says. “We just need to get access to the staff areas.” Pulling her datapad out of her jacket, she opens a new search window- the place must have a Holonet site, though whether it’ll give her the info the needs is another-

A-ha. Jackpot.

She flips the screen around, grinning.

"Hiring performers for immediate start.” Lana reads aloud as she points to the words. “Experience preferred. For interview, contact- Nine. No. Absolutely not. You’re the Commander of the entire Alliance. It’d be completely inappropriate for-”

“Shhhh.” She leans forward, lifting her finger off the screen and holding it against Lana’s mouth. “It’s a plan, which is more than we had five minutes ago. Unless you have a better idea.”

“I’m sure I could think of- there must be some other-” Lana closes her eyes, lips moving, silently counting to five. “Theron, tell me you don’t agree with this.”

He considers. “That depends. Do I get to watch?”

“I’ll need a handler.”

“I’m in. Although I probably should mention that I don’t, technically speaking, have clearance to land on Nar Shaddaa right now."

Lana sighs.

***

The last layer of concealer applied to her cheek, she sets it with powder and brushes her hair until it’s sleek and shining. A swipe of lipstick, a touch of rouge, a quick adjustment of her shirt- good enough. She hasn’t got the right supplies here to manage anything with the scar on her stomach, a problem she hadn’t considered initially; if this club wants the usual costume, it’ll be hard to hide even with makeup and airbrush.

(Most clubs don’t like girls with scars. Or tattoos. Spoils the aesthetic.)

Oh, well. One step at a time.

Emerging from the refresher back into her quarters, she grins at Lana and slips into the voice she’ll use for the call. “War wounds patched. How do I look?”

Cross-legged on the couch, Lana winces. “Force, that accent. You’ll shatter glass if you’re not careful.”

“When’s the last time you- hold on.” She clears her throat. “I know, it’s appalling. Everyone on Nar Shaddaa talks like they’ve gargled razor blades and snorted helium. But I’ve always used this cover identity for this sort of thing there, and in any case when’s the last time you saw a cantina dancer who sounded Imperial?”

“Korriban, actually. Once again, for the record, this is a terrible idea.”

“Objection noted. Theron, is the holo ready?”

He nods, done tinkering with it, gesturing toward the table as he crosses the room to settle down on the couch next to Lana. “Masked and relayed. Ready when you are.”

“All right.” Clearing her throat once again, she inhales, adjusting her posture and her voice. “Here we go.”

She stands before the camera, hands clasped, shoulders back, as the call goes through and a pretty Mirialan, throat bare in a low-cut dress, smiles politely from the other end of the connection and greets her in accented Basic. No cartel ties, no collared employees- by Hutt Space standards this place is getting weirder by the minute. “Thank you for calling Umbrella Corporation, voted Best in Sector two years in a row by the Nar Shaddaa Star. My name is Cira. How may I direct your call?”

(She’s had this conversation half a hundred times.

Breathe, girl. Just like driving a speeder.)

“Your ‘net site says you’re hiring dancers. I’m interested in auditioning, if the position’s still open.”

Cira nods, giving her an appraising look, then relaxes slightly. So far, so good. “We’re currently hiring for performers-” the correction’s subtle but emphatic; no dive bar, this. Interesting. “Any previous experience?”

“Of course.” She ticks them off, one by one, on her fingers. “Here at home I’ve been at Haven’s Blaze, Club Vertica and the Slippery Slope. I did a stint at the Dealer’s Den on Coruscant a few years ago, too.”

Across the room, Lana raises an eyebrow and Theron grins.

“An impressive résumé. If you’ll excuse me a moment, I just need to confirm with the owner but I expect she’ll want to have you in for a stage trial. What’s your name? ”

“Xari.”

All at once the polished smile drops from the girl’s face. “Yeah, right. Try again.”

If someone picked up that cover identity while she was in carbonite- no. Not possible. So what’s-

“I’m sorry,” she says, keeping her tone even, her body relaxed even as she starts planning for half a dozen contingencies. “That’s the only name I’ve got. Is there a problem?”

“She’s been gone a long time, so I never met Xari, but I’ve seen the holos. Everyone here has."

Okay, now this really is getting weird. She used the name for years, sure, in more than a few undercover ops- she never got caught out as Xari and after a little while she had enough reputation to open doors, which made the work easier. But it’s been six or seven years since she’s played the part and the only performance holos she knows of (a mistake, letting those get loose on the ‘net, but between wig and cosmetics and costume she’d barely know herself in them, let alone be recognized now) must be ten years old.

Why would she still be so well known there?

(There are holos? Theron mouths.

Lana, squinting, pulls out her datapad- then elbows Theron sharply, pointing down at the screen.)

"That bold a lie might pass down in the sublevels,” Cira continues, eyes darkening, “but you should do your research properly next time. You must know who owns this place. Did you really think you’d fool Sia’hla, of all people?”

She blinks.

Maybe Koth’s right after all. Maybe this whole thing really is destiny.

“Go and get her, then. Ask her-” she sighs, dropping the accent. This isn’t going to work, not the way she meant it to. But this might be even better. “Ask her if she remembers what happened with Belan.”

The girl scowls, pushing back from the desk. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

“It will to her.”

As she disappears from view, Nine rolls her shoulders and cracks her knuckles and Theron and Lana both stare at her, their faces twin masks of worry. Disconnect? Theron signs.

She shakes her head. Not yet.

After a minute she can hear footsteps, two sets, approaching on the other end of the call. “I should have just hung up on her-” Cira’s voice, out of frame, terse and snappish in Huttese- “but she swears she’s-”

“I’ll deal with it, Cee. Leave us.” The figure that stands behind the desk now isn’t the Mirialan girl; a slender Twi’lek woman in a high-necked black dress stares flatly into the holocam, eyes narrowed as she switches to Basic. “Look, schutta, I don’t know who you think you are or where you heard that man’s name, but-”

She stops, blinks, looks at her face again.

“It’s you. It’s… Kaliyo told me you died. Five years ago.”

(She oughtn’t have covered up her scar. It had been there the last time they’d seen each other, after Hunter and that last damned lucky shot- they’d joked about it, even. So much for my stage career.)

“I keep hearing that this week. But it’s me. I swear.”

"Prove it.” Lekku winding anxiously around each other at their tips- the markings are new, elaborate tattooed bands in a pattern Nine doesn’t know the meaning of- she presses her lips together tightly. “Tell me something only you would know.”

Theron and Lana both look entirely confused now, straight-backed in their seats, hair-trigger tense in a way that echoes in her own nerves: an op poised on a razor’s edge, ready to turn good or bad in the span of a single moment. She nods, as much to them as to the holocam.

“You shot him. You shot him because I made him stop. Do you remember?”

One hand flies up to her throat, just for a second, and the projection shimmers as Sia’hla leans forward hard against the desk. "I- I remember. Where the fuck have you been?”

“That’s a story better told in person. But I need to ask you a favor.”

***

Up next: Dress Rehearsal, in which we meet Sia’hla (and “Xari”) properly, and Nine plans (much to Lana’s chagrin) for a show with quite an explosive encore…

Hey, everyone. Contrary to plans, I got exactly zero writing done over my holiday vacation (the perils of visiting family) and I’ve been working 50-hour weeks ever since. But unless I post otherwise here, you may always assume that a new chapter is coming- it’s just a matter of when I can steal time to write it!