Author's Note: So sorry for the format issues! I know I'm slow going with these updates, but I'm doing my best with everything else going on. Hope you enjoy these two chappies!

Pierce wasn't perfect. In fact, it was on the third week of my knowing of his reckless disregard for his own safety exhibited hourly by his behavior, mannerisms, and combat style that he'd caught me in a particularly foul mood. He must've enjoyed testing the limits of his own survival.

Because I'd heard him talking about slaves.

He thought it was funny. Laughable that some wanted freedom.

He spoke of aliens as if they were pitiful creatures, not people. I knew he was trying to get a rise out of me. He was testing the waters by making a joke in a bar full of nonhumans, myself included.

Wasn't funny.

I decided at one point of sitting by myself, eavesdropping on their conversation, that I'd heard enough, and I began to walk by him, hoping I wasn't noticed but almost wishing that I was so that I could engage him.

He did, of course.

"M'Lord," he called over to me.

I just kept walking.

I heard him shift to get up from his group of comrades, and he was always in a group with them, to make a move to address me.

I wasn't in the mood for jokes. Or challenges. Or anything. I was having nightmares again of my time in captivity with Baras. I remembered every detail when I woke up as if it had just occurred in the previous moments.

Alien, they called me.

Malicious.

True, but hateful and mortifying.

I felt humiliated by Pierce's opinion.

There I was, thinking he saw me as a person, and he was discussing slaves like they were scum.

"M'Lord, don't need to go so fast," he called after me as I exited the bar, twisting around a few others to slip through out of the crowd.

He was much larger, and it took him a few moments to reach me. He was brave enough to touch my arm, a habit few others in the Empire dared to do.

"Why the rush, m'lord?"

"I heard you talking," I snapped at him sidelong.

He didn't react at first, and I didn't actually want him to. I just wanted to get my inherent knowledge out in the open. Made things easier that way.

"To what do you refer, m'lord?"

I made a sound of disgust.

"Like you don't know."

"If you're not happy about something, don't dance around it, m'lord," Pierce replied testily. "What'd ya hear that I said you didn't like?"

I continued to walk. His footfalls weren't as long as mine, and it made me feel little as he trailed along beside me lazily, despite the fact that every aspect of my body language translated disgruntlement, anger, and disappointment.

"I don't want to talk about this with you," I dismissed after a while, knowing doing so would likely get nowhere.

Pierce was stubborn with a short temper. And when his fuse went, it was gone. I'd been in the infirmary when one of his buddies, in this case his victim, had nearly had his arm broken.

I wondered if he'd break my arm.

Probably.

"Then why ya huffing, m'lord?"

"I'm not…"

I realized I was arguing with him and finally stopped, turning to square my shoulders to him. For what it was worth. The man towered over me.

Still, I dared meet his eyes. The corner of his mouth upturned as I did so, pointedly, and I knew I recognized, at least a little, some of that same entertainment that I got from him on his end. People scurried when Pierce walked by. He was a huge man, knew what he wanted, dangerous and volatile.

I refused to scurry.

Made me think of torture.

All at once, my resolve crumbled, and I looked away – but not before the dim amusement in his eyes shifted seriously.

"Wasn't talkin' about you, m'lord," he clarified sheepishly after a while, rubbing the back of his neck.

This reminded of me my many, many initial conversations with Quinn. In a way, our growing closer was almost the same – only Quinn was gentle, soft, enjoyed making jokes, had a way of being delicate and masculine at the same time.

Pierce was raw, brute strength, and he knew nothing of gentleness or my sensibilities.

I rolled my eyes when I realized this.

"Look, Lieutenant," I sighed, "I'm tired, and I don't want to argue. Just…cut back on the 'aliens suck dicks' talk in the future, okay?"

Despite himself, a broad, blindingly white smile flashed at my jargon.

"Sounds funny when you say it, m'lord," he stated boldly. "Where'd you say you were from?"

"I didn't," was all I said, crossing my arms.

His smile faded again.

"Look, we knew you could hear," he finally admitted.

I didn't react to this.

"One of my boys heard something happened with you a few months back. Something big. We wanted to see if we could get it out of you the old fashioned way."

"And what's that?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.

Pierce shrugged.

"Provocation," was all the man said. "We figured one or two barbs to your background might bring some threat of recent Sithhood out into the open or somethin'. Meant no disrespect."

"Well, we'll see some action soon enough," I dismissed, feeling grumpy. "Just leave your bigotry at the door next time or I actually might lose my temper."

"Very good, my lord," the huge man replied.

Days passed and she and the beefy man were inseparable. I heard the way he spoke of her to his friends. His admiration, while at first very pandering, had developed into the sincere, but I didn't care.

His hands, dammit, those hands.

Made my own itch. Made my stomach ache at night. I was sure I'd lose all my hair from squeezing my scalp to release my own tension. She was with him day and night, just when I thought I'd gotten her to open up to me, just a little bit. I wanted her like I'd never wanted her before, an insatiable need. She was everywhere all the time. I couldn't focus. I couldn't speak. I didn't want to eat or sleep.

I wanted to dive into her center, claim her.

She was mine.

The feeling roared and roared when the larger man came around, and I couldn't help but to feel threatened. Not because of the man's physical strength. In a fight one on one, it wouldn't be fair. I was an officer and he was a Special Forces, a highly trained operative. He'd probably kick my ass. But I was smart and fast, neither of which Pierce appeared to be in the sparring missions of his I'd allowed myself to watch. I took pleasure in the thought of beating the man to a pulp, so much so that this sick grin would build on my face, stemming from perverse delight.

She'd kill me though.

Because she doted on him like she'd never doted on me.

She brought him things. The two laughed and joked the way she did with Vette, and I found myself wondering why she never thought to joke with me that way anymore, if she ever had at all. Her hands always found his arms, his shoulders, his chest.

She liked to touch him. I saw it in her eyes.

I wanted to think she was a slut for this behavior, but I couldn't. Because she wasn't. I'd made that mistake once, and it had felt like I'd almost lost her for good. And that was before she was really anything to me.

Now she was everything, and I knew I was so far gone in my admiration of her that I was sure my life would never be the same. I knew I couldn't think she was a whore because that was unfair and she wasn't one, even if I badly wanted to think that of her.

Something felt different between us now. Her eyes, so open before, were guarded in a way they never had been. I could tell she fostered a secret now, and I wanted to know what it was so badly that it almost hurt. I'd do anything for that secret, to get to be the number one in her eyes again, because the way she looked at me told me that what she might have felt for me, even in some small way, was diminishing with every passing day.

I didn't know how to bring it back.

I was losing her to him.

And it killed me.

When we were in that secret military base, I was distracted by all this. I wasn't on point, and my aim was off. She was on point, as usual, but I heard Pierce's rough commentary on my abilities grind through our ears for just enough time to get under my skin before the comm was cut and a self-destruct sequence was activated.

That was when things got really bad.

Face pale, fingers flying, she typed on the computer, desperate, breathlessly. She sought comfort that wasn't there. Comfort she likely wanted from him.

"Any last words, Captain?" she asked.

Her beautiful green eyes lit up, finally, on the brink of near death, unbridled passion welling in them so much that I was sure she was going to kiss me again.

And this time, I'd kiss her. If we were going to die, I could think of no better way to do it than to melt into the soft crevasses of her mouth.

But words, I thought, would have to do. Because if she rejected me, that was it. It would be over. No more chances. Just death.

Somehow, I didn't want that.

My restraint, as ever, was here, even in the end.

"I believe you know how I feel about you, Zaya," I managed, my voice cracking.

Though, despite the impersonal answer, my fingers flitted to her armor and squeezed. For her or for me, I wasn't sure.

"You wish I did," she finally said after a second.

"What?"

"I don't know what you want," she admitted in a rush, like the threat of death was liberating to her. "I don't know what you think of me. I hate that."

Hurt was there in her voice, and I couldn't take it anymore.

"You're…"

The confession, just seconds before so neatly buttoned up in its place, came spilling into the recesses of my mouth. The feelings of it were overwhelming though, and I became aware only too late that expressing the vast, deep, penetrating, all-encompassing love I felt for her would be impossible in any language either of us could recognize.

So I'd have to settle.

Had to.

Because she needed anything.

"You're everything to me, Row," I choked out. "Don't ever doubt that. I don't want to lose you."

The alarm became earnest, deafening, and she finally gave up. She turned up to look at me.

"I'm afraid," she admitted.

And that was it.

This moment, those two words, the tone of her voice, where we were, the fact that we were alone – I'd never felt closer to her or more love for her than I'd ever felt in any moment before this, and I moaned as I heaved her to my chest as hard as I could, hoping and wishing that it would be enough.

I was afraid too, and this wasn't easy.

But somehow, it was easy when I was with her.

We didn't die. But there was a moment when I almost wished we had. Because there'd been a moment, for the briefest of measurements, that she was mine, and I was hers. And there wasn't anybody else in the universe but the two of us, alive, warm, ready to be in it, ready to commit.