Note: much, much love to LeggoMyMeggo92, Perian Swan, camelotprincess1, Kreuse, Ori Heartlyng, LoveFiction2018, amrawo, and sonsofdurin for reviewing, and thanks to all who are reading. i love hearing from y'all!

a brief recap: due to oona's minor injury, lisbet and ben are doing the quarterly fabric delivery to mos eisley.

CHAPTER TWENTY:
obdormition

Lisbet pressed her hands to her hot cheeks, willing herself not to cry in the middle of the street. Mos Eisley was chokingly dusty and crowded, and the last thing she needed was an obvious show of weakness like tears to draw attention.

She saw the door of the shop swish open and Ben stepped through. He nodded a brief goodbye to the owner before heading back toward her and the speeder. Lisbet sucked in a breath, relief at the sight of him threatening to make her eyes well again.

Stop being such a child, she scolded herself.

They had spent the day criss-crossing Mos Eisley, and even though it was almost second sunset they hadn't delivered nearly as much as planned. It was mostly her fault; she'd bungled the directions so they accidentally back-tracked more often than making a logical route from one site to the next.

At this stop, the shopkeeper had been very upset at the delay when he could have already been three drinks deep at the cantina. He snarled back at Lisbet's apology and called her a few choice names, at which point Ben quietly took the datapad with the delivery information from her hands, and asked her to double-check the shipping manifest in the speeder. They didn't have a shipping manifest – but Lisbet realized he had seen her red face and given her an exit before she burst into tears.

"It's getting dark," Ben said now as he approached. "Are you hungry? Perhaps we should have some dinner."

They hadn't taken the time to sit down for lunch, choosing instead to pick up dubiously skewered food from a street vendor. She had only nibbled the edges before offering the rest to Ben, who hadn't seemed to mind the mystery meat. Lisbet's stomach rumbled at the thought of food, but she couldn't shake her uneasiness.

"I wish we could manage one or two more deliveries," she said as they got back into the speeder.

"We'll make up the lost ground tomorrow," Ben said, the controls humming to life under his hands.

They hadn't used the wind screen since getting into town, since it wasn't really necessary at the low city speed limits, but he toggled the switch to close it now. The noise of the street faded to a muted grumble as the screen sealed shut around them.

"There's little point in trying now," he continued. "The only businesses open after dark are cantinas and worse."

"I think some of those worse are on the delivery list," Lisbet grimaced.

"All the better to wait until morning, then," he replied, and when he put it that way she couldn't disagree.

Now that dusk had fallen, the foot traffic increased as everyone left whatever dark hole they worked in to spend the evening at the cantina of their choice. Ben had to drive slowly back to their guesthouse, which was at least a klick across town. A Gamorrean, already tipsy, slammed his meaty fist on the front bumper instead of getting out of the lane as they inched past. Lisbet jumped at the noise, glad that Ben had enclosed the cockpit.

"I hated living here in Mos Eisley," she blurted out, too wound up to not talk. "I didn't want to come back. I think that's why I've been so high-strung today. I'm sorry."

She tried to read Ben's expression, worried that he would be annoyed by the hundredth apology that day for the same thing. But his brows were furrowed with concern, and even though he was looking ahead to pilot the speeder, she could tell he was listening.

"You worked for the Hutts when you first arrived, didn't you?" he asked. "You pretended to be a boy."

"Yes," Lisbet replied. "Gareth was directed to the Palace almost as soon as we landed, while I arranged for lodgings in the city. He saw the dancing girls, and he worried – well, we threw away my dresses and I wore his clothes cuffed up. We didn't know what else to do. It's lucky I'm not very tall."

"Jabba doesn't employ many humans," Ben said.

"Gareth has a silver tongue when he needs to," she explained. "He suggested we had connections back on Coruscant that would disapprove of any mistreatment while somehow still groveling enough to not get killed outright. I wasn't even with him then. I tried to stay out of sight as much as I could. It was pure chance that I ran into Oona one day."

A glimmer of humour flashed across Ben's face despite the gridlock of speeders they were stuck in while trying to turn. "She makes for an unlikely saviour."

"She took one look at me and said, 'What are you wearing, girl?' with a scowl like my clothing personally offended her," Lisbet said. She could laugh at the memory now. "I was horrified at being discovered. She barked out a few questions, looked at my hands, and took off my cap to check if I had sand nits in my hair. It was humiliating, but I trusted her somehow. I knew she wouldn't bother if she wasn't going to help."

"I'm glad that she did," Ben said with a smile. The guesthouse was finally within view, and he pulled the speeder into the hangar bay. The light changed as they went underground, casting his profile into chiaroscuro for a moment that made Lisbet's breath catch. She had always considered Ben handsome, but love made him even more so.

"So am I," she said quickly as she realized she been staring at him a beat too long.

The hangar was nearly full this time of day, and he had to pull into a spot so tight that there wasn't room to step out on the sides. Ben climbed over the back of the speeder with cat-footed grace, dexterously avoiding the still-hot turbines at either corner.

"May I assist you?" he asked as he offered her a hand with very formal posture.

Lisbet didn't think she needed the help, but she accepted it anyway. Her steps were not quite so sure as his had been as she picked her way over the backseat and across the bumper. By the time her feet were on the dusty duracrete next to him, she was glad of his hand after all. The heat and the stress of the day must have made her lightheaded. She caught the sleeve of his tunic with her fingertips to steady herself for a moment.

He put a hand under her elbow, his eyes questioning. The dim light of the hangar had turned them to something between blue and green. Looking at him, Lisbet realized she hadn't kissed him at all that day. She went up on tiptoes to do just that, and his hand that had been on her elbow went to her waist, his thumb almost tickling her ribcage.

"Hello," she said, finally relaxing a measure. She'd been so overwhelmed with doing business that she'd hardly given herself time to think about the man who had patiently helped her with it. Though they'd spent the day together, she felt like she hadn't really seen him.

"Hello there," he replied softly, but just then a raucous party of Rodians pulled into the hangar, their ill-kept speeder making a horrible choking sound. It broke the mood, and Ben turned back to Oona's speeder to retrieve the three remaining crates of fabric that they hadn't delivered yet that day.

Lisbet reached for the last as he pulled it out of the backseat before he could stack it on the others and lift all of them. He paused, arching a brow, and she gave him a look.

"You're not a pack mule. I can carry one," she said, gesturing for him to give it to her. After a split second's hesitation he did, offering it to her in such a way that she could have an easy grasp on the handles. But as he released the weight to her, all the strength dropped out of Lisbet's hands as if they'd been cut off. The crate slipped through her nerveless fingers and thunked to the ground between them.

"Lisbet?" Ben said, reaching for her with concern in his eyes again, brighter this time.

Her hands didn't hurt, but she couldn't feel them, either – not even the pressure of Ben's grasp on one of them. She flexed the other, her fingers responding with a crackle of discomfort up her wrist all the way to her elbow.

"I'm fine," she said quickly. "I just didn't get a good grip. Let's go."

Without giving him time to question her further, she reached down to pick up the crate again, this time locking her fists around each handle with an iron hold. It wasn't very big, just surprisingly heavy with the tightly packed fabric inside.

They had gone up to their rooms when they first arrived that morning, so they already knew the way and had entry codes. Ben's was barely bigger than the two narrow cots it held, but Lisbet's was more comfortably sized, with a small sitting area and hot plate opposite the bed. It was nice to have the extra space, since they had already offloaded the crates scheduled for delivery the next day onto the shabby couch. They put the other three there, too.

"Where should we eat?" Lisbet asked, hoping the question would distract Ben from the way she massaged one palm with her thumb now that more feeling had returned to her hands.

"There's a cantina across the street," he replied. "Perhaps we should stay close for the evening."

"That sounds nice," she agreed.

So far she had studiously ignored their sleeping quarters, but the longer he stood next to her bed, the more she felt like an awkward schoolgirl about it. Stars forbid she start rambling like she had that morning with Oona, so she tucked a hand into the crook of his arm and headed to the door.

"Let's try to get there before it gets too crowded," she said to explain her haste.

The cantina was dimly lit and hazy with smoke when they entered. It was early enough for the crowd to be mostly quiet, but it still took some searching to find an empty booth. Lisbet sat down to reserve it while Ben went over to the bar to order something to eat.

Once his back was turned, she flexed all ten fingers at once. The tips were still numb, but the crackling pain had gone away. She pinched the end of her pinky between her nails, trying to coax some sensation out of it, when someone put a hand on her shoulder and murmured into her ear, "Fancy seeing you in town, princess."

Lisbet jerked away from the hot breath on her neck. The speaker took a leisurely step around her to lean against the table, but she had already recognized his voice. It was Joran Nalto, one of Jabba's debt collectors.

"I'm here on business." She rubbed away the memory of his breath on her skin, trying to make it look like an itch.

"That old witch finally die so you can take over the business?" Joran asked. His expression never seemed to change from one of cold calculation that almost verged on boredom. Lisbet wondered if he had always chosen to be cruel, or if there simply hadn't been another way to survive in Mos Eisley.

"Oona's not a witch," she replied, biting back a sharper retort.

"Don't much care why you're here, frankly," he said with a dismissive shrug. "Just that it saves me a trip to Anchorhead."

It took a moment for Lisbet to understand. "We paid last week. You can't demand more."

"Can't?"

The word cut a sliver of fear into Lisbet's chest. Joran leaned forward to tuck a wisp of hair behind her ear, trailing his forefinger along her throat and under her chin so that she couldn't look away without flinching backward. She locked her jaw, determined not to give him the satisfaction.

"Princess," he said, his voice low, "I don't think you appreciate how good you've had it. Most collectors take a skim off each payment. Sometimes they don't even tell the debtor, just let the boss think the payments are light. You want that?"

Lisbet's vision had gone grey around the edges as her heart rate climbed painfully, but she refused to look for Ben. She clutched a fistful of her tunic under the table to steady her shaking hands, and bit out a simple reply. "No."

"Good." He chucked her under her chin as if she was a little girl, giving her an expectant look.

"I don't have any money," she said. It was true; Ben carried all the payments that were owed to Oona for the deliveries. "Do you think Oona would be stupid enough to send me here with more than a few wupiupi? Everything's on credit. You'll have to come to Anchorhead after all."

His expression still didn't waver except for a tightening around his mouth that might have been a smile, or perhaps just a sneer. "Then I'll see you there very soon, princess."

The breath Lisbet hadn't known she was holding rushed out of her once Joran Nalto pushed his weight off the table and walked away. She tried to scrub off his touch from her throat, but it just felt like the contamination spread to her hands, too. Her blood was roaring in her ears, and now that the moment had passed the room tilted a little with nausea.

Taking a steadying breath in through her mouth and out her nose, she looked around. She hadn't even realized that because the booth was tucked in a corner out of view from the bar, Ben couldn't have seen anybody join her. Perhaps that was why Joran had waited until then to approach. Had he followed them in on a whim? Or had he been watching them all day?

She pushed the thought down – there wasn't anything she could do about it now. Besides, Ben had reappeared around the corner with two glasses in his hands. He set them down on the table as he took a seat across from her.

"Is everything alright?" he asked, that familiar crease between his eyebrows appearing. It always made her want to brush it away with her thumb.

"I'm just ready to go home," she said with a rush of longing so fierce it made her ribs ache, and realized she meant her little place in Anchorhead – not Coruscant, not Hosnian Prime. For better or worse, it had become her sanctuary, perhaps by virtue of housing hopes for the future instead of memories of the past.

She reached for a glass of water and took a tentative sip. It tasted mostly clean: a luxury by Mos Eisley standards. It wasn't that she was ashamed to tell Ben about Joran's threat. She just didn't want to talk about it at all. He had let it drop anyway, his eyes only half on her while he scanned the room, checking the entrances and gauging the crowd.

Their dinner was delivered by a busboy who didn't even stop walking to thunk their dishes on the table. It was some kind of stew, with a chunk of tough haroun bread that, despite already being dipped on one side of each bowl, did not seem to be softened by the broth at all. Two spoons were shoved in Ben's and none in Lisbet's, so he passed one to her.

"There wasn't much on offer," he ruefully explained as she took it and poked experimentally at one of the brothy blobs.

"It can't be worse than some of what I made when I was first learning," she said, scooping up a spoonful with more bravado than she actually felt. After a split second's hesitation, she popped it into her mouth.

It somehow tasted both burnt and soured at the same time. Despite herself, Lisbet's body shuddered in disgust as she fought to keep her face neutral. Ben had taken a bite just after her, and he winced.

"That's…" he began, searching for an applicable word.

"Terrible?" Lisbet suggested. He nodded as he took a sip of water to wash the taste down.

Something about the look of resigned disgust on his face tickled Lisbet, and what began as a giggle very quickly devolved into the kind of punch-drunk laugh that only got funnier the more she tried to suppress it.

"I'm sorry," she squeaked, covering her entire face and heaving with laughter that had gone almost noiseless.

Ben clearly was at a loss about what had set her off, but he chuckled at how far gone she was anyway. She wiped her eyes, holding the afterglow of a good belly laugh in her ribs.

"I'm sorry," she said again now that the giggles had mostly dissipated. "No, don't–" She reached out to stop him from taking another defeated bite. "There's a hot plate in my room. Let's find a bodega and get some takeaway instead of this slop."

They drained their water and headed for the door, and Lisbet felt a weight lift off her chest just by stepping outside. She hadn't seen where Joran Nalto went after he accosted her, but he most likely had stayed in the cantina, and now he couldn't watch her from a murky corner.

They were in luck: there was a little corner shop a few doors down from the cantina. It wasn't much more than an awning over densely packed shelves. Lisbet didn't trust the assortment of skewered meats by the clerk's window, so she looked for the least unappetizing packaged food and threw a couple of mostly unbruised zucca fruit in for good measure. Ben picked up two bottles of water, and they paid for the lot from the petty cash Oona had provided.

Back up in Lisbet's room, they used the hot plate to warm up their cobbled-together meal and raided the caff tray for utensils. There was no knife for the zucca, and it was Ben's turn to laugh at Lisbet's futile attempt to saw into it with a spoon.

"Here," he said, taking the fruit and showing her the seam where it was easiest to break the peel with his fingernail.

"You certainly are handy to have about in a crisis," Lisbet teased, although she was genuinely impressed with the trick.

There wasn't a table for their food and hardly room for one anyway, so they stacked the fabric crates against the foot of the bed and used that instead. The couch was close enough that they could sit at it comfortably.

It certainly wasn't the healthiest meal that Lisbet had ever eaten, or the most filling, but Ben's easy company made it wonderful. They talked as they ate, wondering if Rooh had delivered her calf and skimming through potential names.

"I never had a pet as a child," Lisbet said, "but I did have a stuffed animal called Little Neda. She was a Lothcat and she went everywhere with me until I was ten."

"How did she come by her name?" he asked. They had also been discussing if there was any intrinsic value in a name's meaning or history. Lisbet argued that there was, but Ben wasn't convinced.

She gathered their makeshift dinner plates and stood. "I think it was just on the packaging that she came in," she admitted, and shot him a face when he dimpled and raised a teasing brow at her.

Knowing that she'd lost, she started tidying up the trash from their dinner preparations. Ben stood to help her, but she pushed him back onto the couch by putting Oona's datapad into his hands. "Here. This is the list of deliveries we still have to make."

He understood immediately, and pulled up a map of Mos Eisley in another screen to begin cross referencing the locations for the next day. Lisbet finished clearing up, and investigated the caff tray again. The hotel only provided a very cheap tin of caff grounds, but all Lisbet needed was hot water. She clicked on the kettle and went to her bag, producing two sachets of tea a moment later.

"You brought your own?" Ben asked, somehow both incredulous and completely unsurprised.

"Just in case," she said as she dropped a teabag into each mug and glanced around for sugar. Of course there wasn't any, so she went back to her bag for the little container she had packed. Leaving his unsweetened, she poured the boiling water and brought the two steaming mugs back to the couch.

When they had been eating, they had sat at either end of the couch, leaning against the arms so that they could face each other. Now Lisbet curled up right next to Ben, tucking her feet under her and leaning against his shoulder so that she could see the datapad too. She could sense him tilt his head a little, almost holding his breath as he considered her closeness, before he shifted to make her more comfortable.

The list of remaining deliveries seemed impossibility long. Some of them were to hotels or brothels, but more than half were to various traders that docked in the hundreds of hangar bays scattered across the city. Ben was organizing them by location to streamline the process tomorrow.

It wasn't really a two-person job, but Lisbet hadn't intended to foist the responsibility completely on him. She settled for being a second set of eyes, pointing out the few things that he missed. Mostly she just relaxed into his presence – the way his body moved slightly with each breath, his easy concentration as he problem-solved.

At first Ben asked her questions while he worked through the list, but he must have noticed how her limbs got heavier and her answers slower. Now that her belly was full and it had finally clicked that she was safe, a powerful exhaustion tugged at Lisbet like an undertow in the ocean. She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew, she was being lifted – cradled, really – from the couch.

For a glimmering instant, Lisbet had a sense of being very young again, pretending to be asleep so that her father would carry her upstairs in his safe arms. But all these aches belonged to an older body, and the arms she was in were Ben's.

What time is it? she tried to ask, but all the consonants took too much effort to form and only a few vowels came out. Cracking her eyes open, she immediately winced as the light made a headache bloom across her skull. She curved her face into Ben's shoulder to block it out.

"It's past midnight," he murmured. She may as well have been a featherweight for how gently he lay her down on the bed. She kept her eyes closed, afraid of the light and still half drowning in sleepiness. He kissed her forehead, his beard tickling the bridge of her nose. "Good night, Lisbet."

She caught his hand as he turned away. She meant to ask him to come to bed with her – but she faltered once the thought fully formed. Mos Eisley was abhorrent to both of them, and even though the hotel room had offered a measure of solace from the city outside, it wasn't home. It was no place to make that memory.

"Good night," she whispered instead, circling her thumb across his knuckles as she let his hand drop. She could hear his soft footfalls crossing the room, and then the redness filtering through her eyelids cut to black when he turned off the lights. Finally able to open her eyes, she just caught a glimpse of him silhouetted in the dim light from the hallway as he stepped out the door and it closed behind him.

obdormition, (n., Latin), when one's limbs fall asleep; numbness caused by pressure on a nerve.

as always, thanks to my beta, amelia!

this is the two year anniversary since i posted chapter one of this fic. happy star wars day!

05.04.18