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dingoat · 5 years ago

Note

2, 3, & 8 for the prompt list

Hoooo boy this has taken me a while to get to (I’ve had some asks sitting around much longer though!) but I’ve finally done it; all these questions (from the memory prompt list from way back) fit together really nicely to be used in a single bit of writing! So here we have it; I’ve covered ‘a memory of their father’, ‘a memory of their mother’ and ‘a hazy memory’ all in one, plus covered some ground I’ve been meaning to get out in story format for a while.

Memories; ~2,000 words total, with a couple more pics under the cut!

“Do ye’ remember anything from before you were adopted?”

Ahuska wasn’t quite sure when the conversation had tipped toward childhood reminiscing, but even then the question that silver-furred Ralsko asked caught her a little off guard. She rocked back in Crow’s lap, basking in the glow of the bonfire as she considered her answer.

“Not… really. Even my earliest memories of my buire are pretty hazy, and things before that… stars, I’m not even sure if what I ‘remember’ are actual real things, or just pictures I picked up from somewhere and have held onto. I remember watching these little animals high up in the trees, tiny things with huge bushy tails and tufted ears. I was mad excited to see them, and I think someone was holding my hand. I’ve never seen a creature quite like them, definitely not on Dxun and not that I can recall on Concord or Mandalore, so I’m pretty sure that’s from when I was really small. And then there’s the ‘animal soup’, hah.”

“Animal soup?” Ralsko was the one who said it aloud, but the query was clearly on the tongues of everyone else gathered and listening. Ahuska smirked. “Yeah, Animal Soup. I know I had it some time, I don’t remember anything around it. Where I was, who I was with, no idea. I just remember this big warm bowl, mostly broth, but it was full of… animals. Like, tiny little dumpling things, all shaped like different animals. It was probably just some… quick, cheap food, something easy on a rainy day, but it’s stuck in my head and I know I worked it up to be some incredible dish. I kept asking my buire to make me ‘animal soup’ and they could never understand what I meant. Not nerf bone soup, not nuna noodle soup, nothing that used actual animals as ingredients. Everything they tried was wrong, and I’d get so mad, haha. I think we eventually sorted out what I was talking about but they never did manage to find or make an ‘animal soup’ that lived up to that hazy baby memory of mine.”

“Cute,” came Crow’s murmured, sleepy voice behind her, accompanied by a gentle tug as he started to fiddle with her ears. The glow of the fire was warm and bright, keeping the chill air comfortable for all who sat within its reach. Kip stepped forward to toss an extra log onto the blaze, her powerful Annoo-dat physique making child’s play of what would take the average being considerable effort to haul, and sending up a spiraling plume of sparks into the night sky as a result.

“So what’s the story with your Bothan parents then? If that fellow down in that mansion we shot up were your pa—“ The broad shouldered reptilian began asking, all four arms akimbo as she stretched tall to bask in the bonfire’s heat.

“That shabuir was not a parent,” Ahuska cut her off swiftly, her tone only blunt because of the uncomfortable memory. She felt Crow’s hand squeeze over her shoulder, and with it, a measure of reassurance. “I don’t give an osik about bloodline or who fethed who to make me happen. He didn’t raise me, he didn’t want me…”

A soft cough from off in the shadows gave pause to Ahuska’s tirade, and hers were among the dozen or so sets of eyes that turned toward its source.

Ahuska sighed, and waved a hand disarmingly. “It’s fine, Ulfran, it’s fine. You don’t have to go all… wrapped up in your Jedi guilt nonsense, I don’t blame you for what Hadrex had you do any more.” And it was true. She might not have felt any particular fondness for the man, but her original hostility toward him, for the part he’d played in her kidnapping and delivery to her blood relatives on Bothawui, had gradually worn away. The patient way he worked with Nela, and the obvious comfort Lyrisal took from his presence, made good headway towards amends.

“That’s… not quite it,” the Jedi shook his head, his pale eyes reflecting even more strangely in the firelight than usual. A faint smile tweaked at his beard, though the creases in his brow deepened. “I… I’m afraid there are some details I’ve been privy to that I… I frankly should have shared with you much, much sooner than this.”

Ahuska tensed, blinking toward him. “Uh…”

There was a ripple amongst all the others present, blatant curiosity warring with a vague sensation that they perhaps shouldn’t pay too close attention to the turn in conversation.

“It’s good news, I swear,” Ulfran reassured. “For you see, when Hadrex had ordered a DNA scan from you, he also ordered me to ensure that the results said exactly what he required. The papers were falsified, Ahuska. You’re no more related to the Kor’Var household than you are to… well, me, for want of better comparison.”

It didn’t quite knock the wind out of her, but Ahuska was plainly stunned, and all were silent as they watched for her reaction. She sat very still, eyes half-narrowed but gaze not fixed on anyone or anything. Silently, she processed the fact, before very slowly inclining her head in such a way that even though she was resting on the ground, far lower than Ulfran’s perch, she managed to look down her snout at him. “You faked my blood results. I wasn’t even related to that arsehole.” She spoke very slowly, processing the new information. “He wasn’t my family. None of them… for all that he put me through, Hadrex was never even related to me through blood!?”

“Not in any way,” Ulfran confirmed tentatively as those sky blue eyes turned his way, sharp and critical.

She stared, her expression hard, lips pursed, ears quivering in that way they did whenever she was feeling particularly tense. She felt Crow’s hand come to rest on her hip, but he didn’t speak… nobody spoke, until she finally exhaled and let herself fall back against him again. “Good,” she stated, simply. “Good. Never wanted to know who my blood relatives were before all that osik, and that hasn’t changed now. To hell with House Kor’Var.”

“I’ll drink to that,” came Crow’s voice behind her, with another tweak of her ear.

“To hell with Bothawui,” added Ralsko, her dappled grey fur rippling sharply along her cheeks.

Laks, beside her, and one of the few present who actually held a mug in his hands, lifted it into the air on behalf of all of them. “To hell with Bothawui.”

“To hell with the Empire!”

“To hell with the SIS.”

“To hell with that damned war…”

Everyone began to chime in, with their own personal gripes against the galaxy, increasingly loud and boisterous with their additions such that only the Bothans present, with their particularly good ears, picked up on Ulfran’s quiet murmur. “To hell with the Order.”

“To hell with going to bed when I’m told… HEY! OW!” If Nela thought she was going to get away with throwing that in there, she quickly realised she was sorely mistaken when Crow lobbed a chunk of firewood at her.

“Go to bed!”

“No!”

“Don’t make me shoot you…!”

“MUM DID YOU HEAR THAT.”

“I’m pretty sure I just heard a young member of Clan Crow disrespecting her buir, yes…!”

“I bet you disrespected your buir all the time when you were little!” Nela’s retort earned a scoff of incredulous laughter from at least half the beings present, though the teen’s cheeky smirk suggested that she didn’t actually believe her own words either.

“Pshhh. I was an absolute angel of an ad’ika,” Ahuska huffed. “I mean… hang on, hang on.” She shifted in Crow’s lap, to the sound of his disgruntled protests, something about wriggling around when he’d been perfectly comfortable, and managed to extract her wallet from a back pocket. Not that she actually kept any loose credits in it half the time, mind; its contents were far more precious than that. She leafed through an assortment of carefully folded flimsi, plucking out one that had clearly been carried around for years, the edges all softened and worn, the colour faded, but the printed image still clear enough.

Ahuska stared at it while Crow peered over her shoulder, and her expression became very far-away. When it looked as though she was never going to actually pass it along, Nela scrambled over from her side of the bonfire and tugged it out of the Bothan’s fingers, immediately ducking back out of reach and trusting in the fact that Ahuska would be too reluctant to leave her husband’s lap to make an attempt to grab it back. Nela thought right.

“Ohmystars you’re so cuuuute…!” the half-Twi’lek gushed.

Laks, Ralsko, Kip and Titus, even Ulfran shuffled over from his perch to have a look, and some shifting movement in the shadows might have been Lyrisal, craning her neck to see.

“I’m six, there. When I was pretty much the same height as my buir’ika and, buir’nuvhu could still pick me up with one arm…” ‘Little mum’ and ‘Pink mum’, the terms young Ahuska had used to differentiate between her parents, the latter of course referring to Jinn, her Zeltron mother, while the former was for the diminutive Chadra-fan, Santha. In the image being shared, Jinn had her wife lifted up and perched on her left arm, while a tiny Ahuska mirrored the pose on her right. “That was my first trip to Concord Dawn, I think. We were there for about a week but honestly, I mostly remember that day in the woods. I begged that we head out there as the sun was coming up, and we saw wild reyr, a whole family of real wild reyr! Also found saberwolf tracks, I swear they were even if buir’ika didn’t beli—“

“Excuse me,” Laks’ rich baritone gently interrupted, and when Ahuska fell silent and stared his way, he went on. “But you say you are six years, in this picture? That is… that is very wrong! Here, this little Bothan…” the burly Bothan man poked at Ahuska’s giggling printed face. “…she is at least eight. Maybe nine years, if she is a little slow to hit growth spurt.”

“Tall ones often take a wee bit longer to get there, aye,” Ralsko nodded her agreement, grinning at the picture. “I mean, ye’ got the curve in the ears there, so if ye’ haven’t hit ninth birthday yet it can’t be far off…”

“Noooo… no way,” Ahuska breathed in utter disbelief, still staring toward the pair of Bothan Deserters.

“I’m afraid it’s so,” Laks dared to curve his lips into a smirk, at the same moment Ahuska felt a little jab in the ribs.

“Got a couple of birthdays to catch up on there, do we, old timer?” Crow teased gently.

“Nah, nonono, nayc, I’m…”

“Two, three years older than you thought you were?”

“No, they’re kidding, right? You’re all just ribbing…?” she turned her big blue eyes beseechingly toward Laks.

Unfortunately, the eyes that met her in return were unapologetically earnest, if still very entertained. “Keth had a small boy of his own, shall we fetch him and have him bring the baby holos? You will see for yourself how we Bothans mature…”

“Shab!” Ahuska cursed in resignation, throwing her hands into the air.

“So how old are you now?” Nela piped up again, and didn’t at all quail under the sharp glare Ahuska short her. It was hard to take her Bothan buir seriously when her father’s face was grinning manically from ear to ear right behind her.

“Thirty… two,” Ahuska whispered sullenly.

“So thirty-three, probably, you mean?” Crow cackled.

“THIRTY TWO. And a half. STARS, ULFRAN, GET ME A DAMNED DRINK.”

“Pardon?”

“YOU HEARD ME. In the space of one conversation you lot have managed to re-orphan me and age me three years, get me a stars-damned drink so I can handle the next fethin’ bomb that’s gonna be dropped on me. What next, Crow’s actually an Alderaanian noble and we’re third in line for the crown? Yeesh. Make it a strong one.”

---

Usual disclaimer, being that Crow, Nela and Lyrisal all belong to @humanrevolt and I’m constantly honoured he lets me write them! Ahuska’s beautiful parents Santha and Jinn were created for me by my fantastic RL husband, @nutterbutterbox

#swtor #swtorhub #bothan #ahuska #swtor art #crow #nela #ulfran #swtor fic #character asks #ask meme #memory asks #deserters #eden

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dingoat · 6 years ago

Note

For those prompts you shared, 35. "You make me feel safe"

Briefly, Ahuska wondered if she should ever dedicate some time to learning how to smith beskar for herself. Nobody amongst the Free People’s Army that she was aware of could claim such a skill, and she found herself conflicted over that fact. On the one hand, quality working of the metal was one of the few aspects of Mandalorian culture that was reasonably well guarded, and she was reluctant to see it spread amongst people who could not be expected to follow the Resol’nare. On the other… she, herself, wanted to hold onto as much of her culture as possible, especially now that she was facing so much time so distant from the clans.

Still, there’d be enough time to dwell on that later; for now, she had to content herself with getting her and Crow’s armour into as good condition as possible with what materials and skills she had access to. She might not know how to work the metal itself, but she knew her way around filling and detailing, and even the basic tech in Crow’s pieces wasn’t beyond her.

If only she hadn’t once again lost her helmet. For all the good it had done keeping Crow from harm. Maybe her buy’ce was cursed. Maybe she didn’t want it retrieved a second time.

Maybe she’d give it the chance to come back to her on its own, wait and see if whatever path lead them to Nines would intersect with wherever her beloved old bucket currently lay.

She sprayed on another layer of liquid armor, letting it seep into the tiny cracks and dips in her chest plate and carefully, lovingly, smoothing it down before it was fully dry. The stuff would eventually set rock hard; brittle if in a big slab on its own, but brilliant at patching small splits. Not that solid beskar would ever crack and dent so readily, but her armour was not such a luxury.

“When’d ya get that?”

Ahuska startled at the voice; she hadn’t realised she was being watched. “Hm? Oh, hey, Kip! You mean this armour in particular?”

“Naw,” a shadow fell over Ahuska as the speaker stepped forward, a massive reptilian woman with four arms and more teeth than she could possibly need. An Annoo-dat Prime, one of Nela’s friends amongst the engineering crew. “That big ol’ scrape y’ just filled, I meant.”

“Oh! Ha, actually, that happened the same day I got the armour. Stole it off some fancy guards on Bothawui, that’s from one of their spears. Actually, I… nabbed one of their spears as well.”

“Hah! Yeah, we were busy up in the sky that day, hoo boy we were. Most armour got plenty stories to tell, don’t it?”

“Hm, I guess it does. Well, usually. This piece is too new to really say a lot, most of the dings are from that one day. My leg pieces though…” Ahuska gestured over to the small rounded knee covers, the broader thigh plates, and the interlocking pieces that covered her boots. “They’re the same ones I’ve had for years, just got a new paint job. See that?”

“What, the ding in the side of your boot armour?”

“Yeah! That’s from my first date with Crow. I mean, it’s what I think of as our first date, not sure if he does. But he took me on a job on Naboo, right, and at one point I was knee deep in a river holding onto a wounded zalaaca. If you’ve never seen one, they’ve got nasty claws, front and back feet. Fethin’ Trandoshan came over to take me out and kill the thing for its stupid Score…”

“Kriffing Jagannath points,” Kip uttered with a shake of her head.

“Mmm. But Crow got to him first!” There’s nothing but pride in the grin she flashes at that, coupled with a nice hot tingle as she remembers how exciting those early days had felt. How wide-eyed and naïve she’d been. Life had been a giddy rush, and while sometimes it still felt that way… she had to admit, she rather liked the greater perspective and confidence she had nowadays.

“Now that…” the Bothan pointed then to Crow’s chest armour, and the gaping hole on the left hand side that had punched clean through front and back. “Is going to take some patching.”

Kip reached for the piece, turning it about in all four of her hands as though it didn’t weigh a thing. “I could probably shape a couple of new panels for you, if you don’t think he’d mind durasteel…?”

“Stars, we’ll take whatever we can get at this point!”

“I’ll see what I can do. What’s this mark from?”

Ahuska eyed off the scorch mark that traced along the side of the piece. “If I remember right, that’s… actually from Nines. The day you all got back in touch with us. Same with the one the shoulder there, she dropped him with that hit.”

Kip watched her quietly, her expression growing sympathetic as Ahuska’s became distant, completely unaware of the Bothan’s conviction that Nines was still alive, that her execution had been a lie.

“I was scared as hell. Honestly thought we were both about to die. But I think… I think deep down, as much as she hated and blamed him, she must’ve been trying to give him as much opportunity as possible to redeem himself. She wanted him back. She could’ve killed us both, easily, plenty of times over…” a faint smile ghosted over Ahuska’s snout. “I don’t know. I guess she could have just been enjoying making us suffer.”

“Probably the first thing though,” Kip offered, a rough attempt at making her feel better.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to excuse her. And… and things got better. See this?” She turns back to her own armour, tracing over a dimpled section of one of her thigh plates. “That’s from Dxun. Not even from an enemy shot, I just slammed myself into another soldier when we flew into one of the trenches. Were you there for that?”

“Nope… well, not on the ground.” Kip threw two right thumbs over her shoulder toward the Dreadnought hanging in the sky. “I’ve been pretty well stationed up there since we busted out of holding. Ain’t spent more than three nights in a row on land anywhere until now.”

“I was!”

Ahuska twisted about to see that she had, in fact, been starting to attract a small audience, the individual currently chiming in amongst the handful of beings settled in a loose ring around her being another of the Deserters’ Bothan contingent.

Steely blue-grey fur with pale dapples on her cheeks and shoulders, Ahuska recognized her swiftly and gave her a slow nod as a wash of self-consciousness made her falter. This was someone she knew had seen her at peak misery, after all. “Ralsko! Yeah, I… ah. I wasn’t exactly at my… I mean I wouldn’t blame you for thinking I…”

“Don’t sweat it. You did grand. Only thing we hold against you is not reaching out to us more then, hey?” Ralsko shot her a quick, tight little grin, but Ahuska wilted somewhat beneath it.

“I had no fething idea what I was doing,” Ahuska admitted, dropping her gaze.

“Psssh. Most of us didn’t, to start. Just knew we wanted something better, aye? Besides, we all knew you were pining at the same time. There was only one particular bit of company you really wanted back then, wasn’t there?”

Ahuska felt her ears burn at that, and followed the quick jut of Ralsko’s chin as she indicated just over Ahuska’s shoulder.

Crow was there, leaning against a stack of crates just two paces behind her, arms loosely folded across his bandaged but otherwise bare chest. He was grinning, because of course he was. The man’s expression was, by and large, variations of that grin, and people only meeting him briefly might be excused for thinking he’d suffered some kind of stroke, rendered incapable of any other look. But Ahuska knew better than that; despite his bared teeth, the little crinkles in the corners of his eyes, she could see something pensive in the way he watched her.

Ahuska tilted her head gently, squinting for a moment. “How long have you been there?”

“Long enough. Long enough to wonder how the feth you’ve put up with me all this time?”

A couple of the others gathered snorted to themselves, and Ahuska let out a short incredulous laugh. “The stars do you mean by that?”

“Every one of those cracks in your armour, and half the ones on mine even! Those are all times your life was in danger. Times you could have died. And I’m pretty sure most of them are there because of things I’ve dragged you through or put you up to… stars, we ain’t even up to the wampa ones yet,” a sweep of Crow’s hand indicated a dent on one of Ahuska’s plates, and a filled in split on his own buy’ce. “How are you not terrified every time we go somewhere…?”

Ahuska laughed again at that, still incredulous but far more bright, and she patted the ground beside her, inviting him down. “Are you kidding me? You make me feel safe!”

If he hadn’t still been in recovery, she would have dragged him down beside her; as it was, she waited until he’d settled at his own speed before sitting up tall enough to give him a gentle headbutt and then start motioning to all the cracks and dents a second time over. “This one here is the first time you saved my life. These remind me of when you screaming through the streets of Mos Ila, demanding to know where I was. This? I see that, and remember you coming out of the sky to get me, ha, and fighting with you, back to back, ‘cause you helped me know how. And these…” she patted over the marks he most recently indicated, acquired during that fateful visit to Hoth, the onlooking Deserters briefly forgotten as she locked eyes with Crow. “They’re from when I realised I was willing to stick with you for the long haul. You damn di’kut, this is everything we’ve survived together. This is everything I’ve lived through because of you.”

#ahuska #bothan #swtor #character asks #mandalorian #swtor fic #my writing #swtor writing #also crow #and some others #deserters #free people's army #eden #orion settlement #writing prompts #ty for asking #i do get to them all in the end i promise #!!!

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