PART 1: A Night To Remember.
The feeling of being lost for words was as alien to Lord Kereniss Simon as a Bantha was to Kamino. For all of his twenty three years, he had prided himself on his wit, his intellectual banter, his penchant for talking his way into and out of problems or his seeming inability to shut his mouth in general. Yet now, of all the times when he needed the power of speech as his ally, his vocal cords seemed to fail him.
It wasn't as if he was trying to learn Huttese or Shyriiwook, or even Mando'a, regardless of the fact that he could speak all of those tongues as though he was born to them; all he needed in theory was five syllables in Galactic Basic, split into four of the most easily pronounceable words known to advanced sentient life.
That's where the theory ended. Reality promptly kicked the theory somewhere rather private and tossed it out of the nearest window. Because bugger the syllable count; the words "Will you marry me?" were going to form the most difficult line ever uttered by the normally boundlessly eloquent Sith Lord, and thus were the reason he had barricaded himself in the comm-chamber of his and his family's retreat on Naboo, and was currently pouring his woes out via a secure holo to his master and the Empress.
"Calm down son," came the reassuring tones of Darth Consace, Kereniss' mentor.
"You're hardly the first man in existence to have difficulty proposing; though I wonder why it's us you're turning to for help here." The Dark Council member continued, chuckling lightly, which made a small smile wind its way onto the young Lord's otherwise aghast expression.
"Yeah Ker," added the Empress, looking thoughtful. "I don't know about Consace, but I didn't exactly go down on one knee before the Emperor, I'm hardly the expert at these things."
Her tone was light, but a mirror of Consace's own confusion was not too deeply buried beneath her words.
"That's just it though." Kereniss began, exhaling deeply as he ran a hand through his scarlet hair. "I want to know what she would want out of this."
He chuckled again despite himself. "It doesn't take a certified genius to say 'Will you marry me?"
He grinned, the light prodding of his two greatest mother figures having coaxed some of his usual wit out from within him.
"And since I am a certified genius, I want to make it a bit more special than the usual down-on-one-knee theatrics."
"A certified genius who would never dream of blowing his own trumpet." Consace said, her voice playfully dripping with the sarcasm that her surrogate son had inherited so fully. The three of them laughed aloud, each chuckle bringing Kereniss back into his usual aura of confidence.
"In all seriousness though, what do women expect from proposals…other than the obvious?" he asked of his mothers.
"Raunchy sex." The Empress deadpanned, making Kereniss roll his eyes.
"Seriously Your Grace, you sound like Draco."
The Empress chuckled, turning to Consace to try and deflect the topic and lighten the mood some more. "Speaking of our dear Lord Zelada, what's he up to?"
"He's on Nar Shaddaa, working as a negotiator to the Hutts for the planet's annexation."
Kereniss rolled his eyes, "Last holo I had from him said that he was..."
He raised his fingers to form air-quote marks.
"Knee deep in clunge."
Darth Consace and The Empress both laughed heartily. After raising several sons apiece, vulgarity was the last thing that could hurt the sensibilities of the Dark Council member or the "Dragon Queen." Kereniss grinned broadly as he continued.
"I love my big brother very dearly, but for a man who has, by his own recounting, charmed his way from one side of the galaxy to the other and back, he's not the most tactful individual when speaking to family. I mean there are some things I just don't want to know, much less hear about so bluntly."
"I feel your pain, much as I saw this coming when we sent him there." replied Consace with a flavourful mix of empathy and mirth. "There are wild Tuskens who have never seen civilisation, who retain more familial tact than Draco, but that hasn't seemed to hurt his skill or his libido."
"Either way, don't go asking him for proposal advice" chimed in Empress Ce'na, swinging back to the matter at hand now that Kereniss' sense of humour had completely replaced his overbearing panic.
"That was certainly never on the agenda, Your Grace." He conceded, shoulders sagging slightly as he leaned against the holocommunicator, exhaling a breath that he had no idea he'd been holding. "But still, I need to know what to say, because for possibly the first time in my life...I don't have the foggiest clue what to do.'
"We don't know either sweetling," replied Consace, her face betraying just how much she wished she could hug her surrogate son right now.
If only fate were so kind.
"We aren't Serrin. Only she knows how to make her feel loved."
"Go by what your heart tells you, thank the maker you Sith boys have some emotion. Imagine how hard this would be if you were a Jedi." The Empress mused, to which Kereniss shrugged in acknowledgement.
"Serrin was a Jedi though," he replied thoughtfully. "She still is one at heart, even if she's the fastest rising star in Imperial Naval history. She isn't used to grand emotions; she spent twenty years of her life being indoctrinated to shun them."
He scratched at the stubble that was starting to form on his chin from his enforced seclusion on Naboo. "I'm afraid that if I make some grandiose gesture of affection, I'll scare her. But if I try to make it simple then it'll feel anti-climactic, and I don't know where to draw the line in the middle…"
Kereniss was interrupted from his monologue by a loud, obnoxious beeping noise. Turning his attention to the display on the communicator, from which the intrusive tone was blaring he checked the frequency.
"That's the team from the estate's scanner array" he said.
"But that must mean…"
An unexplainable mix of gut-wrenching dread and mindless joy assaulted the senses of the young Sith Lord as he patched through the frequency. A fizzling, blue spectre shimmered to life on the holo-display, showing a balding, plump man in an Imperial Navy Uniform looking rather flustered as he realised just who else he was sharing a channel with.
"Ensign Mormont sir," began the officer, offering a polished salute to the red-headed Sith Lord, before turning to the others.
"Your Grace, Darth Consace, my apologies. I did not know Lord Kereniss was on holo with you."
"It's quite alright Ensign, no harm done." Ce'na waved away the man's apologies with a smile. Kereniss suppressed a grin; he knew how much the Empress quietly enjoyed seeing Imperial personnel bend-over-backwards for her. With possibly the most relieved expression Kereniss had seen on anybody's face in recent memory, the officer turned back to him.
"My Lord, our scanners show that an Imperial ship has just entered the system; Star-Destroyer Class."
Kereniss tried not to groan, he'd invited his beloved here to spend her week's shore-leave in the comfort and luxury of the Great Six's Naboo retreat, and with the remaining five members so conveniently absent (he reminded himself just how much he owed Dryzell and Tiaba for that one. If all went according to plan, he owed them more than he could ever repay.)
But he hadn't expected her for at least another day. He still had no clue what to say, he had nothing prepared. He had been planning to take a shuttle to Theed to buy flowers and food or possibly a lot of fireworks. He'd been banking on a 24 hour margin that was now lost to him. But that couldn't stop the smile that wound its way around his elfin features at the thought of clapping eyes on her again.
"Did the ship provide its designation Ensign?" he inquired, already knowing the answer. Vette and Consance's eyes betrayed the exact same thought.
"Yes my lord. It's the Skyproud."
Fantastic said his Id.
Fuck said his ego.
"Very good Mormont." said his voice.
"Patch them through our coordinates and scramble a fighter escort for their shuttles. I know Commander Timms has her own but this is not Imperial space so we can never be too careful."
With a crisp nod, a very low bow to the Empress and Darth Consace and another eager salute to Kereniss, the figure of Ensign Mormont fizzled into nothingness.
For the third time in the last hour Kereniss let out his pent up breath, and ran his hands back through his hair, a nervous tick if there ever was one.
"Looks like it's the usual Plan A, dear" offered Consace encouragingly.
"Which is?" inquired Ce'na with a slight smile.
Kereniss returned the look.
"Making it up as I go along, Your Grace."
It had been several years since Serrin had set foot on Naboo, her last visit being back when she was a Jedi, studying under Master Tidas. She smiled as she took in the view of the rolling hills and cliffs afforded to her as she strolled through the gardens of the estate. Not too far away in the distance, there was a waterfall; a brilliant cascade of sapphire diving it's way off a cliff of luminous marble before dancing into the waves below. She had often wondered how, when half the galaxy was torn apart by war; when trenches and redoubts seemed to circumnavigate whole worlds, and the night sky was lit up by the neon blooms of turbolaser fire, that places so tranquil still existed.
Tidas had always loved Naboo, she could remember him guiding her through the market stalls of Theed one year, not long after she'd been apprenticed to him. It had been her eleventh birthday, and he'd taken her round the markets to see if there was anything she wanted as a present. She smiled at the memory, as most Jedi didn't celebrate their birthdays;
"Self-gratification is not the way of the light side" Tidas had once told her, quoting his own master word-for-word, before promptly continuing. "But I won't tell Grandmaster Shan if you don't" with a mischievous wink.
Serrin paused under a tree of cherry blossoms, the only bit of much-needed shade from the gentle, but ever-so-slightly-overbearing summer sunshine. She ran a hand over the broach that remained pinned to her uniform; a tiny emerald surrounded by golden rose petals, the only concession to ostentation she ever wore on her otherwise pristine uniform. (When one commands an entire fleet of Star Destroyers, one can get away with flouting the occasional uniform regulation), It had been the birthday present from Master Tidas all those years ago and as she ghosted her fingers across the emerald she let out a silent prayer that her Master had found peace in the force.
She had spent weeks after her flight to the Empire alone; curled up in bed, almost completely catatonic as she recalled how her Jedi captors had brutalised her, but she would also spend hours at a time cradling the broach her Master had given her between her slender fingers and wondering whether that one tiny flouting of the code, that one gift, that one act of emotion, had started off Tidas' fall to the Dark Side. Had the rose in fact been a weed? One that took root and sprouted all those years later. The Empire's best psychiatrists had seen to her and tried to help her out of the armoured emotional shell she had built around herself.
But in the end, it had only been Kereniss and Kira who she could open up to. The man who'd freed her from what might have been certain death and handed her keys to a new life, and a woman who had walked this path before and had encouraged her to take her first few, tentative steps towards being the woman she was today.
As she dropped her exploring fingers away from the dazzling green stone, she smiled broadly. Even if the broach had ultimately robbed her of her teacher, it had delivered to her so much more. And that was when she caught sight of the emerald's most valuable gift:
He was standing at the edge of the estate's training yard, watching two men and a woman, all armed with red lightsabers dance around a grinning male Falleen, stripped to the waist, effortlessly holding them all at bay, a training lightsaber the colour of the beautiful waterfall Serrin had spied earlier, held almost lazily in his offhand. None of the yard's occupants had seen her yet, so, grinning like a dervish, she quietly snuck around the edge of the yard as the Sith at the centre of the deadly dance parried an overhand strike by one of the men, a Twilek with teal skin, going redder and redder by the minute with exertion, before executing a blindingly fast spinning-kick that knocked the poor lad on his back, his scarlet blade fizzling into nothingness as it rolled away from him.
The girl was next; an olive skinned human who couldn't be any more than sixteen, tried to stab at her target whilst his back was turned, only to have her strike hit thin air as the Falleen danced inside her guard, locking her blade down his own before putting one foot behind her back leg and throwing her from her feet with a blast of the force.
The last acolyte, a Kiffar male with dreadlocks reaching halfway down his back, tried to catch the Sith off balance by charging at him, swinging a savage upward slice, which the reptilian warrior ducked around, before striking again the other way, again meeting only thin air. The Falleen spun past his attacker, and to Serrin's visible shock, deactivated his lightsaber altogether. The Kiffar brought his scarlet blade crashing down, in what was obviously meant to be a finishing strike, but was met with, of all things, the scaly Sith's foot, which had stopped the attack in its tracks with a force-charged kick. Before the Kiffar novice could react however, the Falleen brought his foot down in a wide arc, knocking the lightsaber aside before a second spinning kick from the acrobatic fighter sent the boy flying several yards before he hit the floor with a resigned thud.
Serrin looked on in awe as the half-naked fallen wiped the sweat from his brow and helped the novices to their feet, giving them a parting tirade as he did so.
"And so, the moral of today's lesson is, expect the unexpected!"
"The other morals being that Dry'zell likes to show off and that you really should stop sneaking up on me love."
Serrin jumped at the voice behind her, she had been so engrossed in the action taking place on the training yard that she hadn't noticed the scarlet haired Sith Lord move from his spectating position, much less see him sneak around behind her. Laughing, she spun on her heel and found herself in her lover's arms. She ran a hand through his cropped scarlet hair and nuzzled lovingly against the crook of his neck.
"You know Kereniss, I'd much prefer seeing you demonstrate your…" she ran a slender finger along his sharp chin before continuing. "...incredible skill out here."
"Of course you would," he countered, planting a chaste, yet gloriously tantalising kiss on her lips. "I look far better than 'Zell with my shirt off."
The Falleen in question snorted loudly. "Ha! My brother has such a creative imagination doesn't he?"
He pulled a white shirt over his shoulders, but deliberately left it unbuttoned, letting his granite-hard abs catch the sunlight to reinforce his point. Kereniss rolled his eyes as far into the recesses of his eyelids as they would go, making Serrin giggle as she ghosted her fingers across her lover's own, rather impressive torso. If Dryz'ell was going to play that serve, she was certainly going to catch it on the rebound.
"But alas my dear, your love for my pencil of a brother has blinded you to my beauty." Dry'zell monologued.
"Draco's been giving you lessons hasn't he?" Kereniss inquired, an eyebrow climbing ever higher up his forehead, "Go point your pheromones somewhere else Zell." He added with a playful grin as he snaked a wiry arm around Serrin's lower back.
She had to fight the urge to purr at the contact, her every sensibility slamming the fact that Dry'zell and his battered acolytes were still present against the edges of her consciousness. She had spent several, maddeningly lonely weeks apart from Kereniss, to the point where even the most subtle of touches from him made the former Jedi want to drag her boyfriend's leather-clad backside to the nearest secluded spot, and ravish him till they were spent and panting from the exertion.
Even the very notion of it teased gingerly at the edges of her sensibilities, sensibilities that had been repressed for twenty years and even now were still not entirely unwound. She blinked herself forcibly back out of her sensual reverie, and tried vainly to quell the heat rushing to her cheeks. She wondered briefly if this was just a side effect of Dryzell's Falleen pheromones getting her hot under the collar, if so, she made a mental note to thank Zell later for inadvertently heightening the mood.
…After she had kissed Kereniss' brains out of course.
"In any case" began Dry'zell as he dismissed his three recent victims with a wave of his hand, "I'd pay good money to see you take on three men at once brother."
Kereniss lightly punched the other man on the shoulder as he chuckled.
"I've done it before and you know it."
"Of course, but I wouldn't want to miss the look on your face on the off-chance you get your arse kicked."
"Speaking of things you'd pay good money to see, don't you and Tiaba have plans." Kereniss deflected with a pointed glance, which made Serrin raise an eyebrow.
"Yes yes! I'm meeting her at the Theed Opera house as soon as I've changed." Dry'zell replied, waving his hand dismissively, "Or would you rather I go now and show off my manly physique to the lovely ladies of the Naboo upper class?"
"Their husbands definitely wouldn't be a problem." Serrin chimed in with a cheeky smile and an upturned elfin nose. "With sweat that potent, you'd gas them on sight." Her head bounced against Kereniss' chest as he guffawed, and Dryzell held his hands over his heart in fake-shock.
"My lady, you wound me!" he intoned, earning another round of giggles.
"But nevertheless, I shall depart, a much needed shower beckons."
Dry'zell grinned broadly, "Don't worry; you'll get your romantic evening here, all to yourselves my dear lovebirds." He gave a mocking bow that even the most practiced thespian would be proud of, spun on his heel, and took off briskly towards the manor.
"Send Tiaba my love!" called Serrin to his retreating back, to which her recipient turned and gave a broad salute whilst walking backwards, before disappearing into the confines of the house in search of that elusive shower.
Her fingers entwined themselves in his the moment his brother was out of sight. Smiling from ear to ear, she stood on her tiptoes to plant one agonisingly slow kiss after another against his coarse, stubble-clad chin. His hot breath, musky with desire, tickled against her ear as he spoke.
"Somebody's pleased to see me."
She giggled into his chin, snaking a slender hand up through the back of his blood-red hair as her eyes lock with his.
In these moments, gazing into his deep amber orbs, she sees all the myriad moments they've spent together staring back at her, a kaleidoscope of memories, dancing together in his eyes. She always wonders if he sees the same in hers:
Their flight from captivity; stowing away on a cargo shuttle, curled up against him, seemingly the only friend she had in a galaxy turned upside down, burying her face in his battered robes and feeling his arm around her for the first time, not the loving caress she felt now, just the reassuring hug of a friend
Did he become that so fast?
His voice whispering to her in the darkness that everything would be alright...
She saw the long nights alone in her new, unfamiliar quarters in the Imperial Citadel. Saw Kereniss, bleary eyed and haggard, yet clinging to wakefulness with all his might just so that she had somebody to talk to. He rarely said anything those nights, as he sat in the chair by her bed. But he always listened, listened as she poured her heart out for the life she had lost, until sleep snatched her away, only then would be allow himself to rest.
She remembered the first time they'd sparred, when Lady Kira had officially taken her on as her apprentice; saw his cheeky smile looming over her as he helped her to her feet time after time, only to knock her flat again, different words of encouragement whispered into her ear with every bout.
"You're balancing too much on your right foot, try it like this…" "Try that underarm slash again, only this time REALLY give it some!" "Try deactivating your saber at the last second, and then activate it inside their guard, if you can time it right it works every time…"
Until that fateful bout where she spun inside his guard and knocked him to the floor with the pommel of her saberstaff and pinned him there, she recalled how hard he'd laughed, whilst Kira, Tiaba and Dry'zell had cheered and Draco had rather loudly wolf-whistled from the sidelines.
She'd kissed him then, a giggling, impulsive peck on the lips that had silenced all present. She laughed internally as she recounted her hurried excuses and her lightning fast exit from the room, pausing only to look back over her shoulder at an awestruck Kereniss still lying there, completely spaced out, with Kira standing over him, looking at her with a grin that said "There will be girl talk later!"
She saw their first, tentative, fumbling, giggling attempts at lovemaking. Saw Kereniss' expression flit between pleasure and nail-biting worry every time he thought he'd hurt her. She vividly remembered the first time she felt the network of scars running across his wiry frame under her fingers and lips. Scars that even now, she could feel latticing their way across his back as she caressed him at the edge of the training yard. She remembered how she'd asked him afterward, voice husky as her body took its sweet time winding down from her climax, where he'd learned how to do that, and how she'd rolled her eyes as he joked
"When your older brother is Draco "I-am-the-god-of-tits-and-wine" Zelada, you tend to get a hook-up every now and again."
But it was what he's said next that had cemented the foundations of her love for him, and all sexual jokes immediately jumped out of the window.
"But nothing was ever that special, or that fantastic. You're truly beautiful Serrin."
"Penny for your thoughts?"
His voice broke her reveire around her and she blinked herself back into reality, but not before pressing a slightly-less-than-chaste kiss against his lips.
"Just thinking how much I love you."
"You really need to stop buying those romantic-comedy holovids." He chuckled, but he kissed her anyway, teasing her bottom lip between his teeth before dancing their tongues together in that all-too-familiar waltz.
"But I love you too."
"Hello pot, my name is kettle; you're looking a bit on the black side." She had no idea exactly when his penchant for banter had rubbed off on her, but in any case, the incredulous eyebrow standing at attention halfway up his forehead was priceless. He touched a mocking palm to his forehead in a mock swoon, reminiscent of his brother's departing performance, and she stifled a laugh.
"You do me wrong dear one."
"Can I do you right as well?" she inquired, voice oozing with sarcasm and betraying just how much she wanted to laugh. Kereniss' dragged his palm across his face and let his eyes roll for the umpteenth time that afternoon.
"And the porn holos can go straight in the bin next to the rom-coms." he muttered, but it didn't stop him kissing her again, laughing breathlessly against her lips.
Out of all their long history of precious moments, it was these that she loved best. Laying her head against his chest and feeling his laughter and heartbeat beat a comfortable rhythm against it. Moments like these revealed just who he was underneath, past all the legends and mysticism of 'The Great Six', past the tales that told of the half-dozen Sith who carried Emperor Sahesri's banner through the darkness of space, they who had never been bested, the elite amongst the warrior society that was the Sith Order. That was what the majority of the Empire got to see, and Serrin thanked the maker everyday that she got to see the level deeper than that, the true faces behind the legend, the people that the collective imaginations of the Empire had built into superheroes.
To your standard Imperial citizen, Kereniss, like all his siblings, was the ultimate warrior, the stalwart banner-man of the Empire. But only she knew the subtleties. Only she knew the real him, corny though it was to say it. She knew her boyfriend didn't have Draco's inherent charm or nonchalant bravado (not that the eldest surrogate child of Darth Consace and Darth Banaton couldn't back up that bravado, quite the opposite she knew), nor did Ker have Dryzell's athleticism and patience around students. Though he'd never admit it, he couldn't match Tiaba with a blade seven times out of ten either. But none of his siblings could match his wit, his penchant for dressing down even the most pompous of foes, or for making her laugh so hard she thought her sides would burst.
The scarlet Sith had a silver smile hiding a silver tongue; a tongue that could, amongst it's endless arsenal of retorts and banter, could invoke a fire within her soul at the merest word, the barest hint of an "I love you," in her ear from him could set her senses ablaze.
Draco was the womanizer, the charmer, the scoundrel. The man who could, if he was to be believed, talk the clothes off of any woman in Imperial space, and most of the Republic whilst he was at it.
But it was Kereniss whose cultured tones could make a girl fall in love with him. The brothers liked to joke that it was Draco who could break hearts and Ker who could mend them. But the best part about it, from where Serrin was standing, was that he saved that talent for her and her alone.
She didn't know when exactly they had managed to find themselves at the edge of the estate's rather large, blissfully unoccupied pool, or when she'd managed to divest him of his shirt. All that mattered was that he was here, and he was hers. She pressed her lips to his, fencing her tongue inside of his mouth like a predatory beast, she felt his hands wander about her body, subtly caressing all the weak spots about her that he knew so well. There was something animalistic in the kiss; it wasn't the blissful, yet aggressive passion with which they melded themselves into each other, but the very nature of it. Everything about the contact seemed to scream. I am yours, and you are mine, this territory is marked. As she broke away from him, she looked up into his eyes again and frowned, there was something unreadable there, something…
She had just enough time to register the playful smirk on his lips before he gently shoved her backwards, sending her tumbling into the pool, still largely clothed.
She surfaced to the sound of his roaring laughter from the side of the pool, and shot him a murderous glance whose edge was entirely blunted by her bedraggled, soaked appearance, and succeeded in nothing but making him laugh louder. It was infectious as always and before she realised it, she was laughing along too, splashing him with a torrent of water with a mere thought, and drenching him from head to foot. Oh the force had its uses sometimes.
Shaking himself off like one of his precious Akk pups, Kereniss shot his lover another trademark mischievous look, before cannonballing into the pool with the force of a turbolaser blast. He surfaced in front of her, snaking a soaked arm around her and laughing into kiss after kiss as she mirrored his movements, all the while treading steadily into deeper water…
"How in the name of the force did I ever get so lucky?"
He mused aloud, running a practiced finger along the contours of her spine as they lay on the grass by the pool's edge. She hummed with contentment as he placed a chaste, somewhat spent kiss on her lips. He silently thanked the force for two things; that he had crossed paths with her, his amazing, brilliant, incomparably beautiful lover. And that this particular pool edge was not visible from the house.
They were still as bare as the day they were born, their skin glistening in the sunlight as the pearls of water still rebelliously clinging to them caught the summer glare. To him, Serrin Timms looked beyond a goddess.
"What is it?" she asked, her concern-laden voice snapping him from his reverie, he gazed into her emerald eyes, more beautiful in his view than even the green jewels themselves. A wash of emotions flooded through him, fear, concern, paranoia, love, awe, shock, lust, they all melded together in his gut like a rainbow with a lead lining.
He gulped, trying to keep his expression neutral.
This was it. This was the moment. This was the reason he had spent so many hours locked in that comm-room pouring his heart out. The moment that every second of his life had laid the road towards, since he first saw her dragged into that godforsaken Mantellian prison.
Kereniss had seen many things; he had been fired on by scores of Republic troopers, he had crossed swords with Jedi, he had seen planets burn in the fires of war, he had seen Star Destroyers blasted out of the sky and felt the death scream of all their passengers resonate in the force, an inhuman cry of terror followed by sinister silence. He had watched helplessly as his birth parents had been mercilessly cut down by the Jedi spiriting away the Emperor's lost son, he'd seen the light leave his father's eyes. But nothing terrified him as much as this.
Because this wasn't a fear of death.
This was the terror of losing what made life worth living. Compared to that, death was a tiny speck of dust in a hurricane.
But something in Serrin's anxious eyes becalmed him. Was it the force reaching out from behind those jade orbs, willing him to continue? Or was it something more primal? He didn't know. He never learned what it was. All that the, for once, entirely flabbergasted Lord Kereniss Simon knew was that something in his love's gaze awoke a fire within him. A blaze that burnt brighter than the twin suns of Tatooine, that consumed him body and soul, yet could not harm him.
The ring was in his hand before he even knew he'd moved, the golden band inlaid with Corellian pearls, clinging to a single, tiny, dazzlingly bright green crystal at the centre; a tiny, artfully filed and restored shard taken from the core of Kereniss' own lightsaber. He had never been one for ostentation, but love had its way of kicking one's personal rules in the face.
"Will you marry me Serrin?"
The words danced from his mouth, in a voice barely above a whisper. Hang the plans! Hang the fireworks, and the feast, and the emergency last-minute trip to Theed for scented candles and whatever else seemed romantic enough for the occasion. Now was the moment, and he wouldn't have swapped it for the world.
His eyes never left hers, his amber orbs locked onto the green as he channelled every bit of emotion he could into the gaze. Nothing happened for a beat…two…three.
And then suddenly she was on him, her lips crashing against his and her voice moaning the same words into his eager, caressing mouth.
"Yes…Yes…oh Gods above yes!" she cried between kisses, rolling over on top of him in her rush to get at him. He didn't respond for several seconds, his brain trying desperately to catch up with this beautiful sensual assault, before her words clicked.
"You mean it?" he breathed, a grin dancing its way across his lips as waves of joy cascaded through him.
"Of course, you great fool, I love you!" she replied, leaning down to kiss every bit of him she could reach.
Words didn't describe his elation; much less did they do them justice. So he settled for pouring all of his pent-up passion into one kiss after the next, pausing only to slip the gold, pearlescent band onto her finger, before fisting his hands in her hair and dancing his lips across her lips, her neck, her shoulders, anything!
"Don't you dare go anywhere near your clothes," she breathed, struggling to keep the joyous laugh from her voice as her hands traced patterns across his toned chest.
"We aren't going to need them for a good few hours yet." She grinned mischievously, eyes twinkling with joy.
"Serrin, did I ever tell you how much I love the way you think?"
Three weeks later
Times changed, the ebb and flow of the force waxed and waned, cultures clashed, ideologies sprouted only to be cast down, newer and more imaginative ways for one person to kill another sprouted from the collective consciousness of the universe all the time. And yet somehow, for all that the galaxy evolved and matured as it danced through the ages, like a fine wine matures in a cellar. Some things, very unfortunately never changed.
And one of those things, mused Draco Zelada as he leaned against a clean (meaning slightly-less dirty) patch of wall at Mezenti spaceport, is that Nar Shaddaa is still the arsehole of the galaxy.
The Arkanian Sith Lord gathered his dark robes about himself, rubbing his gloved hands together to stave off the biting chill that always seemed to follow him about here, that and the smell.
He cursed his luck; why in the name of all that's good did they send him for this poxy assignment?
Yes, he knew the strategic value.
Yes, he'd heard the mission parameters.
Yes, he knew just how much of an economic boom was coming the Empire's way if they could successfully negotiate the annexation of this dung-pile of a moon. Or just how many credits would flow into Imperial coffers if they could get even the barest percentage of a tax on its myriad, shady revenues.
Yes, he knew that whilst Kereniss or even the Empress herself were the Empire's usual first choices for negotiation, his particular brand of charm and blunt bravado was more likely to appeal to the Hutts.
Especially since most of the Hutts here liked to surround themselves with all manner of scantily-clad exotic females from every species under the Galaxy's collective suns. The challenge hadn't been trying to sell the Empire's deal to the Cartel, it had been finding out which dancer, or which slave or which advisor he had to serrupticiously bribe, threaten or sleep with to put the right words in the right ears. If all the oversized slugs' favourite courtesans were whispering encouragement to their masters, then even the most avaricious of the Cartel's slimy sleazeballs were putty in his hands.
But even so, why couldn't someone else have frozen their arse off for this shite stained goldmine of a moon?
Speaking of other people, Draco's eyes perpetually scanned the arrivals lounge for the Imperial Delegation. A smile crept upon his face and he allowed himself a quiet, disbelieving chuckle.
"Imperial Delegation…" he muttered under his breath. "I'm making this sound almost like official business..."
"Well technically..." began a familiar voice behind him, making the Arkanian jump like a scalded Nexu, a practiced hand snapping to the hilt of his lightsaber before he recognised the youthful tones. "It is official business."
"Qai'zon, seriously don't do that!" Draco breathed with a flustered shake of his head. The Imperial Prince grinned and slapped a playful hand on the elder warrior's back as he moved to stand next to him.
"Officially, we're here to formally oversee the final secession of Nar Shaddaa into the Empire, my father's coming and everything."
"The Emperor?" Draco asked, somewhat aghast. "I knew your mother was coming, but I thought your Lord father was out on the front lines?"
"Well there is an unofficial side to every story" mused the rising star of Imperial Intelligence, before catching the Arkanian's gaze with a playful glint in his eyes. "Just like the unofficial reason for this visit is so we can all get drunk out of our wits and paint the town red to celebrate your brother's upcoming nuptuals"
"Indeed" Draco chuckled, settling himself back against the wall, resting his hands behind his head and settling into a very well-practiced pose of pure, unadulterated nonchalance.
"Oltenon owes me a hundred credits." He smiled contentedly.
"Don't tell me somebody actually bet against Kereniss and Serrin tying the knot?"
"No, he bet against them having the stag party here."
The Zabrak took a sampling whiff of the air and promptly pulled up the slate-grey bandana around his neck to cover his nose and mouth. Even though the older man couldn't see the most of the prince's face, he didn't have to. His eyes were doing all the cringing for it.
"I can see his point."
Draco nodded sagely, before raising an inquisitive eyebrow.
"So where are they all then?" he asked, his eyes darting about the lounge again like a pair of miniscule dervishes.
"Well most of them should be here any moment now" replied Qai'zon, his eyes joining the Arkanian's in their search.
"Mum, Dad, Auggie, Jaesa, Kira and Odelio were coming straight from Dromund Kaas in Dad's old Fury…"
"I'm sure your parents will have been enjoying plenty of nostalgic sex on the way over here then." Draco interrupted with a waggle of his eyebrows that made Qai'zon shudder with revulsion.
"That was payback for you scaring me half to death."
"Yes but seriously, I didn't need that image."
"Neither did I, and I was there." Came a feminine voice from somewhere to Draco's left, making the Arkanian leap upright for the second time in the last quarter-of-an-hour.
Wheeling about on his foot, Draco had just enough time to lock eyes with the new arrival before he found himself staring at the floor and trying to subtly regain his balance from bowing so fast.
"Your Grace, I was umm…"
"...Timing your jokes poorly?" The Empress suggested, a grin starting to split her features. A sneaked glance over Draco's shoulder told him that Qai'zon was utilising every fibre of his being to force himself not to laugh.
"Something like that Empress." he conceded, straightening up, Vette's smile mirrored on his own face. Striding over to her by-now madly chuckling son, she pulled the tattooed boy into a tight embrace.
"I've missed you mum" the Zabrak mumbled into her shoulder as she held him close, still giggling to himself at Draco's expense. The Arkanian rolled his eyes rather theatrically and turned to the rest of the assembled party.
The Emperor was wearing a humoured expression as he watched Draco bow again before him, before waving him to his feet and shaking his hand paternally.
"Your Grace how was the flight?" he asked politely, both men trying to suppress their grins at Draco's recent dressing-down.
"It felt good to get back in the Fury's pilot chair again." Sahesri admitted, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. "But I don't think the upholstery has been changed in twenty years, my neck feels like it's made of bricks."
"I can point you to a few good massage parlours for that, Your Majesty."
Sahesri laughed heartily, giving a humoured shake of his head as he spoke, "I'm sure I'll manage Draco."
With a chuckle and a polite nod, the Arkanian moved aside to let Sahesri go and embrace his son, turning his attention to the two female Sith who had been standing at the Emperor's shoulder.
"Allow me to welcome you two lovely ladies to Nar Shadaa! The soon-to-be former jewel in the crown of the Hutt Cartel!"
He gave a slightly mocking bow, looking every bit the smarmy tour guide, making both of the Emperor's hands fail utterly to retain their straight faces. Playing up to the performance, a rather frivolous looking Jaesa upturned her nose in her best imitation of regality and extended a slender, gloved hand which Draco kissed, before spinning Sahesri's first apprentice into his arms and over his knee with the grace and fluidity of a dancer. The younger man waggled his eyebrows playfully at Jaesa, who gave up on suppressing her laugh.
"Honestly Draco, I'm a married woman."
He feigned disappointment as he helped the second-most-powerful woman in the Empire to her feet.
"Aren't you all these days?"
"Don't worry Zelada, one day you'll find somebody" offered Kira, pulling the Arkanian into a friendly hug.
"I already have, and somebody else, and somebody else, and their twin sister, and their cousin and their maid, and their…"
"We get the idea." Kira chuckled, releasing him. "You'll be a bachelor until the end of time."
"Naturally, Lady Kira" began Draco, ruffling his hair and striking a dramatic pose, head tilted upwards, eyes pretending to be gazing at the stars in mourning.
"Imagine all the poor, lonely ladies who rely on me for comfort and succour. Who depend on me to show them what a real man feels like for the first time in their cold lives? Imagine the mass heartbreak if I were to renounce the ways of the stud!"
"Oh dear, how could we allow such an atrocity?" came Augustus' voice as the Twi'lek slapped Draco on the back.
"That said, if we got your flirtatious arse married off, maybe the rest of us poor bachelors will start getting noticed." Chimed in Odelio, Jaesa's adopted son making his presence known as he appeared out from behind the crown prince.
The Sith guffawed loudly as he pulled both men into a brotherly hug.
"And speaking of poor bachelors, where's my baby brother gotten to?" He loudly inquired of all present.
"Late for his stag party, I mean honestly, the very nerve of it!"
"As if I'd miss this!"
Draco rather hurriedly shoved past the others in his rush towards the source of the voice. He had just enough time to relish the twin looks of shock on Kereniss and Serrin's faces as they stepped out from the pink neon haze of the Naboo shuttle concourse, before he grabbed the younger man firmly around the middle and gave him a bear hug that would have winded a Wookiee.
"Draco…can't breathe…" came an exasperated gasp from somewhere near his ear, and guffawing, he let his famously flippant brother go, but not before ruffling his hair so hard that it resembled a blow-dried Nexu.
"Well Ker, getting hitched at last" he began as the younger man straightened up. "I must confess, I'm a tad jealous."
"Oh come on Draco," replied Kereniss, with a quite audible wheeze. "You've been here, what? Two months now? You must've shagged a thousand women here already."
With a theatrical grimace and a hand over his heart, Draco replied. "Alas dear brother, my standards are slipping" his pupil-less eyes betraying his sarcasm. "I only managed nine hundred and ninety nine..."
"Honestly Draco," replied Kereniss, voice oozing with mock-chastisement, face desperately trying to look reminiscent of an irate teacher scolding a particularly apathetic pupil, whilst combating the grin that was inexorably battling its way from ear to ear. "You're a disgrace to the family."
"I know, I must atone for my great dishonour" the Arkanian cried, playing to whatever invisible crowd watched attentively within the theatre of his own mind, before cocking his eyebrows seductively in the general direction of his brother's betrothed.
"Of course if Serrin is willing to help…"
The former Jedi snorted. "Sorry Draco, but I'm afraid you aren't my type" she began teasingly, sneaking a hand into Kereniss', which produced a satisfyingly smug smile on the aforementioned man's face.
"I like my men to be butch enough to manage two lightsabers."
A wolf-whistle that sounded distinctly like Augustus sounded somewhere in the background, followed by what was unmistakably Kira's voice yelling, "You go girl!"
"Alas my dear, you don't know what you're missing," replied Draco, voice heavy with feigned resignation complete with a particularly dramatic pout.
"Draco, I can go talk to any stripper on this half of the planet to find out what I'm missing, I'm sure I can manage without finding out first-hand."
"Checkmate!" Added Kereniss, pulling his beloved into his arms and planting what Draco thought was a sickeningly romantic kiss onto her petite lips.
"Awww!" Draco crooned satirically, to be met with a particularly rigid middle finger from his little brother.
Chuckling to himself, he pulled the couple into a rather less crushing hug than before.
"It's fantastic to see you both, especially you little sister."
He put particular emphasis on the last words. Truth be told, even though he'd never voiced it before, he'd though of her as his sister from the moment he'd first seen them together: Both snoring away peacefully in her chambers, that first night she'd spent on Dromund Kaas; her curled up on the bed in a fetal pose, him sprawled across the adjacent chair like a dropped marionette, the gap between them bridged only by their hands, still interlocked even in their dreams.
He'd known then that what his brother had found was special and he vividly remembered placing a blanket around Kereniss' sleeping form and whispering the words "Whatever you do, don't cock this up."
It was fair to say, he hadn't.
She didn't reply to his little affectionate title, but unless all of his senses had buggered off in the same direction as his common sense was wont to disappear to, her arms squeezed him just that little bit tighter.
"Anyway, before I lampoon my baby brother any further, we should probably get moving."
He turned in The Emperor's general direction, "Even in the heart of Hutt Space, there's only so long before somebody recognises Your Graces."
"That's assuming you're ugly mug hasn't already given us away." Chimed in Augustus, earning an eye roll and a mocking bow from Draco before the 'Imperial Delegation' made its way out of the Spaceport and into the night air.
He and Kereniss linked arms around each other's shoulders, the very picture of brotherhood, and gazed into the blinking neon cascade that was Nar-Shadaa in the early evening. It was moments like this, he mused; the sheer level of affection of having so much of his extended family in one place, (and the radiant thrill he felt permeate the force around him as it was saturated by so much positive emotion), that helped make the smuggler's moon's perpetual brand of scum-ridden, drug-addled, sexed up, arms-dealed, disease-infested, money-laundered, frozen hell worth it.
"Fuck me, it's freezing out here!" came a cry from behind him that sounded suspiciously like Qai'zon.
That also helped.
It wasn't exactly easy to be her these days. That said, it had never been easy being her. The knots in her muscles throbbed incessantly with the pressure of all the billions of souls that seemed intent on forcing her to carry their weight, just as they had done every day for the last forty years. She couldn't remember the last time she had last sat down, much less laid down to sleep.
Her neck felt like it had been carbon-frozen, and she swore that if she spent more time crinkling her face up in concentration, over one nail-biting catastrophe or another, then it would just stick that way and her features would age another twenty years whilst the rest of her aching body gradually shuffled along to catch up. She was well into her sixties, and certainly no invalid; she had lost none of the athleticism of her youth, and could throw a punch or swing a blade with the best of them. Forget that, she was the best of them, even now.
But that didn't stop the creases working their way gradually into her visage. Nor did it stop her hands shaking. And it certainly did nothing to clear the gradual blurs in the background of her vision as her eyes slowly trickled their lazy way into deterioration.
But more than anything else, it was the weight of the galaxy that made her feel old.
She felt the gentle, yet pronounced thud under the soles of her feet, the tell-tale sign that her ship had dropped out of hyperspace, as she strode onto the bridge, vaguely acknowledging the salutes that cascaded around her as her feet carried her towards the viewport.
Nar Shaddaa glistened in the abyss as the distant glare of Nal Hutta's sun reflected off its surface. The aptly named "Smuggler's Moon" seemed to light up the blackness of space just as the extravaganza of neon lights lit up its huge ecumenopolis against the night sky. The Empire had bought this tiny faecal jewel from the Hutts, in exchange for enough ships and war material blueprints to make Cartel Space expand threefold, and with the profit from the tiny satellite's innumerable dalliances in all things perverse or brutal, the Empire's economy would receive a boom that would last hundreds of years, meaning more ships, advanced weapons, more soldiers, more propaganda and more fuel for this Imperial renaissance that was attracting more and more deserters from the battered Republic with each passing year.
"Master Shan, our ships have dropped out of hyperspace," began the Preserver's Ensign, a tall, muscled blonde woman in her early twenties.
What I wouldn't give to be that young again. She mused, before turning to give the speaker her full attention.
"Our stealth fields are running at maximum across all ships, neither the Imperials nor the Hutts have any idea we're here."
Satele allowed herself a sigh of relief, that was some good news at least, but she refused to succumb to underestimation. She knew well the price that had been paid the last time she had tried to ambush the Empire.
"Scans show that the Imperial and Hutt ships are alert, but they have not moved from their moorings, judging by numbers we have them outnumbered and outgunned four-to-one."
"We had them outgunned at Brentaal IV for the most part Ensign," she countered calmly. "The Empire's battle-meditation techniques can coordinate their ships so well that being outnumbered becomes a paltry distraction."
She inwardly grimaced as she saw the poor Ensign stare at her own shoes glumly, she hated having to scold her own crew, but now was not the time to play mother.
"Ma'am," came another voice from behind her; the bass, perpetually relaxed tones of Commander Tiros, the Nautolan first officer.
"Our agents on the ground report that the Imperial delegation has arrived at Mezenti Spaceport."
Satele straightened, even now, after having crossed swords with the agents of two different Emperors over forty years, the hairs on the back of her neck still went rigid, as though each tiny filament had turned to beskar in the space of a nanosecond.
"Give me the list Commander." She breathed, trying to keep the anxiousness out of her voice.
The Nautolan's eyes scanned the page, scratching a clawed hand against the teal flesh of his chin.
"Emperor Gujoja and Empress Ce'na have been confirmed, along with the Crown Prince Augustus, and their second son Qai'zon."
The Nautolan released a pent up breath and visibly grimaced, the perpetual smile that Satele had gotten so used to, the only thing warming up the cold, business-like efficiency of the Preserver anymore, had vanished from his face.
"The agents have also confirmed the sighting of Kira Carsen and Jaesa Wilsaam-Kallig, the Emperor's Hands, along with Jaesa's son, Odelio Wilsaam-Kallig. Another report confirms that the Agent known as Cipher 20, from Imperial Intelligence, met the party at their hotel."
Satele ran a hand through her gradually greying hair, with so many of the Emperor's inner circle present, the stakes of this game had just been raised significantly.
"Is that all of them Commander?" She begged the force that it would be, but somewhere within her, a nagging voice that soundest suspiciously like her old teacher, Kao Cen Darach, whispered that it was almost certainly not the case. As ever, her inner pessimism was her wisest guide.
"No my lady," replied the commander, shaking his head resignedly. "The spies also report that Commander Serrin Timms of the Imperial Navy is also planetside, along with Kereniss Simon and Draco Zelada, two of.."
"The so-called Great Six, I know" she interrupted. "Thank you Commander."
The Nautolan saluted and returned to scanning the spies' reports, that nagging grimace still clinging to his oceanic features as he ran a full background check on the last two names. But Satele was far more concerned with the girl who'd come before them.
It was not the first time that the mention of the former Jedi's name sent Satele on a one-way, regret filled foray into the past.
She saw, as she always did, the retreating back of Master Tidas as he pelted onto the shuttle in the Jedi Temple's hangar, his apprentice running behind him, tears in her green eyes, begging her master to tell her what was wrong? Why they were leaving? Why he was angry?
She saw the half-empty caf mug slip from her hands and smash against the floor as she read the report on Serrin's capture, read what those disgraces in Jedi robes had done to her, remembered how she had held her head in her hands for hours as she cried for what this ridiculous war had driven her order to become.
She saw the guilty looks and what she prayed were not mummer's tears on the faces of Serrin's three Jedi torturers as she stripped them of their ranks and packed them off to the Agricultural Corps, fighting all the while to keep the shame from her voice.
She saw the pictures of Kereniss Simon's scarred, elfin face in the black-ops reports, and wondered despite herself if the Republic was becoming more rotten than its enemies, that Serrin had chosen to run away with her handsome scarlet Sith, rather than coming home to Tython, and whatever horrible fate she imagined awaited her there.
"Ma'am?" came the tentative voice of Tiros again, shattering her unwelcome revelry around her. She doubted she had ever felt so relieved to hear her first officer's voice. She shook the last of the images from her mind and nodded her acknowledgement. Now was not the time to live in the past, now was the time to take action. She gave her shoulders an experimental roll, as though trying to make the weight of the galaxy just that little bit more comfortable upon their her bones.
"Ready the strike team Commander, I'm going down there."
"I dunno guys, I've never been much of a drinker" mumbled Serrin, pushing Jaesa's drink-proffering hand away as she focussed on not letting her head wobble, thus betraying how pathetically drunk she already was off of the few glasses she'd already had.
"Oh c'mon Serrin, don't be such a woos" insisted a swaying Jaesa, hiccupping with an air of finality as she waved the glass of purple liquid which Serrin couldn't for the life of her remember what it was called, in front of the younger woman's somewhat unfocused eyes.
"Oh…go on then…" smiled Serrin resignedly, taking the offered drink and knocking it back with one lazy swig, followed by a short series of startled coughs.
"What the hell is in this?"
"Oh you know," began Vette, leaning back comfortably in the booth, voice steady and ever-so-slightly amused as she watched the gaggle of women around her fail utterly to compete with her own lead-lined liver. "Alcohol, Corellian grape juice," she shot the others a devilish grin.
"Grated Jawa testicles…"
Everyone guffawed loudly as Aliya spat what was left of her partly swallowed drink across the table, earning a humoured thump on the back from Kira as her daughter seemingly grimaced, choked, hiccupped and laughed at the same time.
"Not cool, my lady." wheezed Aliya, drunkenly resting her aquamarine head on her mother's shoulder. "I've dissected enough genitals without having to drink the stuff."
Since the half-Chiss agent was far too preoccupied with leaning on her mother to change the subject, a rather grimacing Kira did the job for her, to the welcome, recently unnerved smiles of all assembled.
"So my dear apprentice," she began, hoisting a half-full glass of some rather exotic cocktail from Alderaan. "Your beloved came to his senses at last."
The ginger Sith Lady was somewhat successful at keeping the tipsy slur out of her voice, she was certainly having more success than the rather unabashedly plastered Jaesa and Aliya, but she lacked the fortitude of her Empress and it showed, despite Kira's best efforts.
"It feels a little strange," conceded Serrin, taking a measured swig of yet another drink that had somehow materialised in front of her, she'd long since stopped paying attention to how they got there. "I think we both saw this coming, but to actually have stepped over the thrash….the thrrsh…the tresh…"
"Threshold?" suggested Vette, taking a cocky swig of Jaesa's drink which the absent-mindedly humming drunk Sith failed to notice.
"That one!" Serrin indicated with a wave of her arm, the sort of gesture that wasn't ever needed in sober conversation, yet feels somehow entirely essential when explaining something several drinks deep.
"To have stepped across the threshold still feels strange."
She hiccupped, a tiny mouse-like squeak. "Wonderful, but strange."
"I hear that," began Vette, placing a comforting hand on the young commander's swaying shoulder. "When Sahe and I got married, suddenly everything I had done before felt like a whole other life."
She fixed Serrin with a knowing, motherly look. "I felt like I was being born again, like everything had changed and I was a whole new person. But I wouldn't swap married life for all the gold, rare artifacts, cultural enlightenment and mind-blowing sex in the universe."
"I second this." Mumbled Jaesa, pulling Vette into a sisterly hug which made both of them chuckle and raising a toast which was mirrored by the entire drunken feminine gaggle.
As she raised her glass, Serrin mused on how her soon-to-be husband was doing. He and his 'stag group' had taken a taxi to the underlevels, which she knew inevitably meant Draco (who had already taken over the role of 'best man' for the evening, since nobody trusted Augustus to still be coherent after the first hour) was going to drag them all into the Red Light district. She chuckled slightly, she trusted Kereniss to not do anything too inappropriate, after all, he had always prided himself on having very different tastes to his brother (which Draco had always taken with an affectionate roll of the eyes and a falsely ominous promise of 'I'll make a player out of you yet').
But she hoped that things weren't going to be too wild for the Sith Wolfpack, she wanted her fiancée back in one piece after all…covered in vomit, stinking of alcohol and staggering about with the shocked air of someone who's just been spat out by a Sarlaacc of course.(Not that her 'hen group' were going to be in any better state with Kira and Jaesa at the helm) But in one piece nonetheless.
Is it too much to ask that Draco just takes them to a bar, gets them all a lap dance and then they go play Sabaac at the casinos? she thought, before knocking back her umpteenth drink of the evening and letting out a sudden cackle of laughter which turned a surprising amount of heads and made her blush so hard she looked like a Devaronian at a sauna.
Yeah….far too much to ask.
"OGGY, OGGY, OGGY!"
"OI, OI, OI!"
"OGGY, OGGY, OGGY!"
"OI, OI, OI!"
"OGGY!"
"OI!"
"OGGY!"
"OI!"
"OGGY, OGGY, OGGY!"
"OI, OI, OI!"
Draco's call and his companions' response could have been heard from space in all likelihood. The eldest of the Great Six mused proudly, as he led the hooting, hollering, catcalling, staggering group of inebriated Sith Lords through the bowels of the city, one arm around Kereniss' shoulders, the other firmly gripped on Augustus' arm to stop him from hopping into every strip-club and dance-parlour they strode past.
They had begun their night in a fairly quaint little bar in the nicer quadrants of the underlevels; a couple of drinks, a few bawdy jokes and several toasts of congratulations to their red-headed compatriot on finally (the emphasis on the last word being unanimous amongst all present) plucking up the courage to make the first step into married life.
Draco grinned at the recent memory of the quiet disappointment in all their eyes when they'd thought this was all he'd planned for their bachelor party…before a small army of strikingly gorgeous Nautolan, Twilek and Falleen strippers had invaded the bar at Draco's pre-planned bequest (and at the expense of his own rather deep pockets and regular customer discount), and the night had begun in earnest.
Almost immediately four of the exotic dancers had dragged a rather overwhelmed Augustus into a back room and given him a private dance; which had had the intended side effect of making them all laugh themselves hoarse when the heir to the Empire staggered dreamily out of the room again half-an-hour later, covered in lipstick marks and what was unmistakably one girls' holo-frequency number scribbled on the back of his hand, and another girls' golden bikini top dangling around his neck…and the unintended yet inevitable side effect of making the drunken prince try to dive into every strip-joint on the entire moon.
And now, several hours, several dozen more drinks, one fistfight, three run ins with club bouncers resulting in two cases of mind-tricking and the aforementioned fistfight, three lap-dances apiece and in Draco's case, one disappointingly quick dalliance in the act of love in the back-room of a strip-club later, here they were.
"OGGY OGGY OGGY" shouted the Arkanian again, stirring up another round of responses from his fuddled fraternity whilst he snaked a quick glance over his shoulder to check they were all still on their feet. Qai'zon was practically skipping along, the night's extremities seemingly having not fazed him at all, whilst Odelio clung to the prince desperately as his legs seemed intent on turning to (as Augustus had so eloquently put it in one of those priceless jokes that really only sounds funny when you're practically under the table) "The jelly side of the force." But the seemingly constant defiance of his sense of balance hadn't stopped Odelio from grinning like a madman the entire way here.
Kereniss had been roving through the neon-lit streets like this night was his last. That said, Draco had been incessantly, yet affectionately referring to the party as his little brother's final moments of "truly being alive."
Followed by several, monologues about how Ker was about to "fall headfirst into the deep, dark pit of monogamy, babies and a gradual yet inexorable decline in sex drive" each foray into thespianism in the previous bar had been accompanied by twin gasps of fake emotion from the two Togruta dancers perched seductively on each of the elder Sith's knees….or were they Nautolan?...Draco couldn't remember. Either way from where the Arkanian was standing, his little brother's wide-eyed, wide-smiled expression was exactly what the doctor ordered.
"Thanks for being my substitute best man," Ker accounced, casting a wry look at the 'official best man' who was still fingering the gold bikini top around his neck and slurring the words 'It's okay, Daesha gave me permission…'
Kereniss tightened his perpetual hug on his elder brother and hiccupped throughout his affirmation: "Nobody knows how to party like you Draco."
"I don't know how to party like me" Draco countered, ruffling Kereniss' hair. "I can never remember how I do it." The party guffawed loudly as the silver-haired Sith guided them into their tenth bar of the evening.
Taking up a booth at the back of the bar, Augustus managed to find his feet for the first time in the last hour and, with a slurred mumble that sounded something like "First round's on me" strode to the bar with a surprising level of balance, one that Qai'zon joked was entirely unbecoming of one who had put so much effort into getting wasted.
Draco watched the crown prince's retreating, leather clad back as he shuffled away, trying to listen in across the deep bass thumping of the bar's loudspeakers, blasting out some beat from a lesser-known Coruscanti artist, to find out what ungoldly mixture Auggie was ordering for their umpteenth round of shots that evening. However, his plan was foiled by the rumbling, distorted bass of the club's music, so instead of words, not that Auggie was in too much of a talkative state, he just watched as the barman cocked an eyebrow at the crimson-skinned Twilek beore reaching up and producing a rather elaborate purple bottle filled with force-knew-what, topped with a golden figurehead of a miniature krayt dragon.
Draco turned away with a characteristic shrug, clearly Augustus had reached the stage of drunkenness that suddenly gave one an appreciation for more cultured, bourgeoisie forms of liquor. Thankfully, unlike most individuals who reach that stage, mused the blank-eyed man, Augustus was as rich as he was thirsty.
"So Ker," he began. "Regale us again with the tale of how you met your soon-to-be-blushing bride?"
"Looking for tips?" the younger man countered with a grin.
"No, he's looking to point out all your cliché romantic bollocks" added Odelio, a tad slugglishly with an equally addled smile, accompanied by a 'hear-hear' from the, as ever, serene and iron-livered Zabrak sitting on his left.
Kereniss shook his head dramatically, before leaning upon the table and gesticulating in his best 'storytelling' pose.
"Well you see lads…it all began on Ord Mantell…"
Draco would later muse, in his more sober, introspective and self-critical moments, that perhaps him asking for his brother's story was where everything went wrong. He would spent endless hours in the coming weeks alone in his quarters on one of the Great Six's many hidden retreats, fighting back the tears that seemed to cascade down his face in an endless waterfall of unbowed, unbent and unbroken emotion, all the while cursing himself for asking for that one story, the tale of the night the first link was forged in Kereniss and Serrin's chain.
Because if Draco Zelada had not, in that single, cursed moment, taken his eye off of the prince and turned his attention to his scarlet sibling, there was a chance that his blank, cloud-white eyes might have seen the group of people sitting next to Augustus at the bar.
He might have seen how their eyes kept darting towards the drunken group of Imperials, out from under their dull, weathered hoods.
He might have seen them whisper amongst themselves, an innocent enough action, were it not for the furtive glances they kept shooting their way.
He might have seen their lightsabers.
"Lord Dryzell, Lady Synn, something's not right." Came a sudden exclamation from the Skyproud'sensign, causing the Falleen to snap back into reality from his quiet meditation in front of the viewport of the ship he had temporarily inherited from his soon-to-be sister in law. On the far side of the room, he saw his sister shoot him a furtive, worried glance, before they both rushed over to the Ensign's monitor, as the officer's fingers danced across the keyboard in a desperate attempt to return life to the suddenly dead screen.
"What is it?" replied Dry'zell in a worried tone.
Why tonight? He begged of his own conscience, of all nights why this one?.
"The comms are down my Lord, something's jamming us."
"Lord Dry'zell, incoming signals…" that was all the ship's communication's officer had time to say before her monitor exploded, showering the bridge in shards of glass like a hail of razors and throwing the poor girl across the room, landing with a sickening crunch against the wall.
She didn't get up.
The Falleen sprang into action, leaping up towards the main viewport with the agility of a Wookie in the treetops, barking out orders as he went.
"Activate thrusters, get us out of our moorings now! Divert all non-essential power to topside deflector shields, get the crews to their guns…"
The Sith Lord was thrown from his feet before he could finish his sentence as the entire ship was rocked by a huge explosion, blooming out of the port side of the Star-Destroyer like a giant, orange flower of death.
"Lord Dryzell, we've lost half of our port-side missile batteries!" Came a cry from one direction.
"Signals closing on us my Lord, enemy ships moving into attack formation."
"They came out of nowhere!"
"There's so many of them!"
"We're all going to die!"
But Dry'zell didn't really hear any of their anguished cries. The only voice that rang about him was the one inside his own mind, beating the words he most dreaded on tonight of all nights against the edges of his brain.
The Republic is here.