A/N: Thanks, everyone who's taken the time to leave a review so far! Just a quick warning: this chapter is where things get atad more twisted. No fluffy-bunny Atton here, I'm afraid.
The rest of the ship was a rolling boil of Sith and Republic officers. Del sacrificed care for speed and forced her way through the heart of it, spurred by the thought of the creature that crouched in a galaxy of shattered glass and scented her in the dark. Having Atton along was a blessing–he shifted tactics without needing to be told, picking off one of her attackers or laying down cover fire precisely when it would be most helpful. Even so, progress was exhausting. For every Sith she cut down it seemed two more sprang from the shadows to take his place. Her skin was slick with sweat and blood by the time they turned the final corner and reached the wide double doors of the hangar.
The man from the tank had gotten there first. His body blocked their path, a hulking silhouette in the uneasy glow of the emergency lights. Yards past him was a small freighter, the key to their freedom. It might as well have been on the other side of the galaxy.
"Jedi . . ." That same whisper, dry wind on rusted metal. And punctuating it, the purr of a lightsaber kindled to life. Deathly cold rolled off of him in waves. The sigh that escaped Del's lips turned to steam in the frigid air.
Atton was the first to break free of the tableau, firing relentlessly at the scarred man's face and chest. His target hardly seemed to feel the blasts, even when they sizzled against the raw wound over his heart. The lightsaber twitched in his hand and neatly deflected one of the shots back at Atton, blazing a blistered trench across his jaw.
Atton swore and fired a second volley, not at the man but at a raised panel in the wall next to him. It dented, then exploded with enough force to bend the durasteel support bars outward like fingers uncurling from a palm. The scarred man stumbled badly and Atton charged him, heaving his shoulder into the larger man's chest, forcing him backward until he overbalanced and fell.
He landed on one of the struts. It punched through his chest and held him there like an insect on a pin. His body convulsed and went slack, sagging against the strut. The blood that seeped from the wound was thick and black. Throughout it all, the man never made a sound.
Del drew back, sick to her stomach. The strange paralysis that seized her in the ruined man's presence was gone, but she made no move toward the freighter. She felt trapped in the sort of nightmare where the monster is always just one step behind–she was certain that if she ran, her legs would move like they were under water.
"Thanks for all your help." Atton's mouth was tight, angry. He touched the glistening wound on his jaw, winced, and gave the impaled corpse a savage kick. "Who is he?"
"I don't know," she said. "And that's not a face I'd forget."
"Yeah? He seemed to know you." He hefted the blaster, tipping the muzzle in her direction. "Are you a Jedi, Del?"
Behind him, the dead man's hands twitched.
"Atton," she whispered, "we need to leave now."
"All right." He holstered his gun, still glaring. "But once we're making trails in hyperspace you better feel like chatting."
The bowed head snapped up. One hand clamped down on the back of Atton's jacket, jerked him off balance, and hurled him into the wall. He crumpled to the floor and did not get up. With a revolting slippery sound, the scarred man pulled himself off of the strut and stood before her.
Del wanted to curl into a ball and wrap her arms around her head until reality reasserted itself. But this was a fight, and fighting had forever been her only real talent. She crammed the fear into the farthest corner of her mind, dropped to a crouch, and brought her sword crosswise before her chest.
His uneven gaze swept across her body, never betraying a flicker of emotion. Then, with an incongruously graceful sweep of his lightsaber, he charged.
They clashed in a shower of sparks.
Even with the enhancers buoying her strength his first blow nearly jarred Del's weapon from her hand–any strike that got past her guard would be the death of her. A rogue thrill of pleasure raced down her spine. It had been too long since she'd been in a real fight.
The controlled savagery of his attacks, the way he countered her thrusts almost before she made them–all betrayed his connection to the Force. Del no longer held that particular advantage, but implants kept her blood pumping fast and clean and neutralized the lactic acid in her muscles. Her capped joints glided as smoothly as ball bearings. She twisted out of the lightsaber's path with unnatural limberness, ducking under his guard, compensating for his superior reach by staying right up close.
The stalemate couldn't last forever. Though her arms ached he never seemed to tire, every blow as vicious as the last. At last they drew apart, circling. Del slipped the length of chain from her arm. The next time he struck she blocked the lightsaber with her sword and turned it aside. Then she caught his wrist in a loop of chain and pulled with all her strength.
Triumph sang in her veins as the desperate move actually worked, the lightsaber flew free of his hand, her sword bit deep into his side–
–and never fazed him. Viselike fingers clamped down on her wrist and twisted until something snapped. The vibrosword clattered harmlessly to the ground. Before she could free herself, he caught her by the throat.
"You fought well, Exile. Better than I had hoped." For a moment his fingers strayed to the scars along her jaw. She winced and turned her face away, amazed that any living thing could be so cold, like liquid nitrogen was pumping through his veins.
Then his hand clamped shut on her windpipe and lifted her into the air.
Del fought wildly, writhing and clawing at his hand, hammering his shoulders with her fists. It was like battling a piece of living rock. As the air in her lungs went stale, the man never flinched and never once looked away from her eyes.
The fight left her; she hung as limp as a doll in his hand. Her fingers slipped down the buckled flesh of his chest to swing uselessly at her sides. Through the haze Del saw his expression change, felt the pressure at her throat ease ever so slightly.
Then came a blur of light and motion behind him. He dropped to his knees with a roar of pain, letting her fall. For a moment her brain could not make sense of what she was seeing: the crimson glow of his lightsaber where his heart should be, the hooded woman pushing it deeper, til the hilt was flush with his back.
"Go to the ship," the woman said, giving the hilt a savage twist. "He will not lie still for long."
Del could hardly stand. Her throat felt like she'd swallowed a fistful of hot broken glass, and the sickening looseness of her wrist let her know that it was, at the very least, dislocated. She would be lucky to reach the freighter before her gruesome adversary awoke a second time. Still, a stray pang of compassion brought her to Atton's side. He was still breathing, but an ungentle nudge with the toe of her boot provoked no response. Del swore, heaved his weight across her shoulders, and staggered to the waiting ship, where she dumped him unceremoniously to the floor.
Her mysterious rescuer dashed in after her, shouting. "Now! Take us far away from this place!"
Del thought at first that the old woman wanted her to fly the ship, but the engines thrummed to life on their own. Someone else must have been on board, awaiting the woman's command.
Through the hatchway, Del watched the scarred man lurch to his feet, saw his face twist with rage as he looked from her to the old woman at her side. Then the hatch slid shut, eclipsing him from view.
Atton awoke on the cold metal floor, feeling like one giant head to toe bruise. Since he didn't recognize anything, he guessed that Del had somehow gotten both of them onto the freighter. He grimaced; she could have at least slapped a bandage over the oozing wound on his jaw.
She was easy enough to track down–Atton just followed the reek of cheap cigarra smoke to the cockpit. The maybe-Jedi lay draped across the pilot's chair, sleeping, cigarra burnt down to a nub of ash between her fingers. She'd stripped down to an undershirt and trousers, and with her arms bare Atton could make out the bumps and dimples of circuitry under the skin. Just looking at it set off a parade of tiny phantom bugs across his own skin. Before, she'd always worn a scarf wrapped around her head; now, he saw that besides a fractal pattern of scar tissue and the microcomputer interface arching from her right eye, her scalp was totally bare. Even the ear had been burned away.
"Keep staring and I'll start charging admission." Del's usually husky voice was an emphysemic wheeze. When she opened her eyes, the whites were pin-pricked with blood. Atton knew that particular type of hemorrhaging. Darth What's-His-Ugly-Mug must have wrung her neck like a wet towel.
"You look like hell," he said.
"Play nice, Atton." She tilted her chin and gazed at him through her lower lashes. Beneath the right hinge of her jaw flared a deep, purpling bruise. A thumbprint. "I just saved your life. Don't make me regret the effort."
"You hypocritical bitch." Atton laughed to keep himself from smacking her. "I should have guessed you were a Jedi."
"Yes. I was a Jedi." She held up a finger to halt any interruptions. "Note the past tense. I haven't paid dues to that particular club in a very long time."
"You want to explain what the frack you're talking about?"
"My life story is in the public archives for anyone and everyone to see, but I suppose I'll save you the trouble of looking it up." She lifted the cigarra to her lips, saw how little was left, and flicked it across the room. When she spoke, it was with all the emotion of someone reading their grocery list aloud. "I served under Revan, before he dyed all of his robes black. I fought Mandalorians across a dozen planets, and finally I blew up Malachor V along with half of my face."
It finally clicked. Katya Deleón, the devaronian had called her. Atton had seen General Deleón once during the Wars, standing at Revan's side in the ruins of a battlefield. It had been the Republic's first battle with the aid of the defector Jedi, and their first decisive victory against the Mandalorians. Even at a distance the pair cut a striking figure: Revan fierce and brooding, the 'saber in his hand still lit even now that the battle was won, and the woman at his side, a serene beauty with streamers of dark hair lifted by the breeze.
No wonder he hadn't recognized her.
Automatically, Atton buried those thoughts beneath memories of a twi'lek hooker flexible enough to use her ankles as a headrest. He probably didn't need to bother. Del wasn't even looking in his direction.
"I went back to the Council, turned in my robes and lightsaber, and moved on to–" she gestured airily at the dim interior of the freighter, "–bigger and better things."
"Great. If you'd had a lightsaber back there, I probably wouldn't be standing here feeling like a herd of bantha tap-danced on my skull. Why didn't you at least use your creepy little Force tricks to buy us some time?"
Her smile could have been painted on. "Because the Council took that as well."
"I can't believe it." Atton flipped his hair out of his eyes and glared. "One random act of kindness and I get stuck with a crippled Jedi and a Sith lord that looks like he sleeps with vibroblades."
"If I wasn't so tired, I'd break your nose for that." Del chuckled, a hoarse and unpleasant sound. "You've kept me from my nap long enough, Atton. But before you go . . ." Throughout their conversation, she had cradled one of her arms in her lap. She shifted position, and he saw that her wrist was a puffy, black and blue mess. "Be a dear and pop my bones back into place."
Atton was sure he'd misheard until she picked up the injured wrist in the opposite hand and held it out to him firmly but carefully, as though it might try to escape.
"You have to be kidding me," he said. "Do I look like a doctor?"
"You look better at breaking bones than setting them," she mused. Atton tensed, but she seemed to attach no particular significance to that observation. "On the other hand, we're a long way from Telos, and I'd rather not wait until my wrist is too big to fit through my shirt sleeve."
Atton gingerly took hold of the proffered arm and probed for the misaligned joint. He remembered how her hands had first caught his attention, how thin and fragile her wrists had looked from afar. He thought of the last time he'd been this close to a Jedi, and his grip convulsively tightened.
Del cried out in pain, a sort of helpless, gasping moan, and lust arced through Atton like lightning. His skin tightened, gooseflesh broke out across his arms. He twisted her wrist, drawing out the sight of the dilated pupils, the trembling lower lip, until at last the bones slipped back into their natural configuration.
"There," she whispered, ashen-faced. "That wasn't so bad."
She tried to pull away. Atton did not let go.
Del's smug indifference fell away like a mask. She eyed him warily, as if realizing for the first time that the killing talent she'd praised could work just as well on her. Slowly, deliberately, Atton slipped his other hand under the hem of her shirt, where the skin was smooth and unscarred.
"I see our superfluous passenger has made a full recovery."
How the old woman managed to get right behind Atton without him hearing a single footstep, he never knew. One minute it was just him and the Jedi, all alone with no one but the stars looking on. The next, she was standing in the doorway, with a mouth like a knife-slash and a voice like pure acid.
His hands dropped to his sides. As Del straightened her clothing, something like guilt tickled the back of his mind. He was Atton now. He'd left this sort of thing behind him.
"Atton, this is Kreia," Del said blandly, as if the woman had walked in on the two of them playing dejarik. Her eyes did not meet his. "I'll leave you two to introduce yourselves. Excuse me."
Kreia stepped aside to let her pass, then blocked the doorway again. Even though her hood was pulled low across her eyes, he could feel her scrutinizing him like some sort of fascinating and repulsive insect. He crossed his arms and stared right back.
"So . . . I take it you're the one who rescued us?"
"I rescued the Exile," she corrected him sharply. "I would rather she had left you to your fate. She faces danger enough without your attempts to . . . distract her."
Atton chuckled. "If I need to know which brand of prunes to buy, I know who to ask." He took a step toward Kreia. The crown of her hooded head barely reached his shoulder. "Anything else I do is my business."
"Is it?" Kreia smiled, and Atton felt it then– the sudden shift from predator to prey. "Sit down, fool," she said. "There are things that must be said between us."
Sion knelt in the dead silence of the hangar. In his fist, the Exile's enamel orchid twisted gently on its chain.
He could still feel her pulse slowing under his hand. She should have died. She would have, had not Kreia interfered.
Kreia. His old master had chosen a new pupil. But why? The Exile was strong, but pain had ruined her. What use had Kreia for someone already broken?
Rage seared through him. He captured it, focused it, honed it knife-sharp. In the end, it did not matter what had caused his former teacher to crawl out of hiding. He would find the Exile, her precious fallen Jedi, and tear her to pieces before Kreia's eyes.