a/n – Thanks to Starpopper and i-need-shine for commenting! I'm really glad you guys are liking the story.
I don't have a beta so I have to read and reread the chapters before posting them. And I've still found a few mistakes here and there after posting. I'm hoping to go back and fix them after I finish the story.
The next chapter after this will be on Tatooine and I'm planning so far to write some lemon zest into it… nothing much but like I said, slow burn. I hope this chapter didn't seem to sappy? Dyn (Or "Din" in canon) isn't too sappy of a guy so it can be difficult to think of how he'd react to things.
Chapter 10 – Hyperspace Again
"Turns out your intuition was right." Dyn set a cup of water on the floor along with a bowl of Corellian Apple slices for the kid… they seemed to be a favorite…, and he came waddling up cooing his thanks at Dyn. He pulled a slice out of the bowl and began to gnaw on it before shoveling it whole into his mouth and going for more.
Dyn shook his head and smiled at the kid as he looked up at Ter'a and continued to shovel apple slices into his mouth. It was about eight hours after they left Coruscant and they were settling in for another forty-nine or so hours until they needed to exit hyperspace. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor as she'd let the kid play around her while Dyn prepared the Apple for him. The kid was very keen to spend some time with them after they returned to the ship after so long away.
"What do you mean?" She asked curiously, looking up at him.
"About leaving Coruscant so early..."
She looked concerned, "What happened?"
"Well," he began pulling his chair up next to her and looking down at her. "There was an explosion at Project H and Ao is dead."
"What?!" She looked positively shocked. He patted her gently on the shoulder and in his helmet, he gave her a big smile.
"Looks like Gideon sent men looking for his informant after those troopers failed to kill me and get the kid on Takodana on his information." He brushed a stray stand of hair out of her face before continuing, "After you were so worried about us leaving so quickly, I was curious about your intuition. I've been monitoring Coruscant's news vids since we left, and about a half hour ago I saw some coverage that an explosion in Project H destroyed virtually the entire Project."
Her eyes widened as she looked at him
"And Ao?"
He leaned back, "Hmm, well... the vids said that a blue, male Twi'lek liquor vendor in the market district was shot and killed. But, and I think you'll agree with me, it's too much of a coincidence to not be Ao?"
She nodded and furrowed her brow, "With all that happened, I can't possibly see how it could be any other liquor vendor who is also a blue Twi'lek male..."
"So... Gideon was obviously on Coruscant looking for us, or information about us, around the same time we were leaving. You knew that we shouldn't have stuck around too much longer..."
Privately, he really liked having her Force intuition around.
Ter'a sat up on her knees and faced him. Thoughtfully, she nodded and said, "He definitely would have found the Crest if we'd stayed..." Now she looked pensive and he leaned toward her questioningly. "What do you think are the chances that he did find the Crest before we left?"
Dyn smiled again. "Even if he did, he doesn't know where we're going... we didn't tell anyone. And we checked for bugs and trackers again when we first entered hyperspace."
She looked up at him and smiled and he knew that she knew he was right... Gideon would be able to find them again, sure, but he'd have to do a lot more work unless one of them slipped up. Or, he thought with pang of nerves, if his contact or someone else on Tatooine was a spy... Well, he thought, they'd probably have to kill him too then…
Suddenly, he remembered something and stood up causing her to lean back and look up at him in surprise.
"I almost forgot, I got something for you..."
—
Ter'a looked curiously after him as he turned away and went to the crates of supplies and began to rifle through them looking for something. She looked down at the kid as he tried to hand her back the empty bowl.
"Here," came Dyn's voice.
She looked up to see that he had begun to pull several things out of the crates.
"I got a few things to help you feel more comfortable here..."
She stood up smiling, and walked over to see what was in the packages he was pulling out. When she reached him, they looked at each other for a moment before he handed her the first package. She looked down as she took it and turned it over in her hands to find the tab to open it. Once she pulled the tab an air-compressed soft down pillow popped out and began to expand back to its normal size in her hands.
"It's down..." he said, " I asked Mekkie for the softest he could get... I hope it'll work well for you..." she heard the notes of nervousness in his voice, worried that she wouldn't like it.
She loved it. She smiled up at him and shook her head, unable to find other words she just said, "It's wonderful," as he handed her a second package in which she found a blanket made of the softest Nabooan fleece. She rubbed the corner against her cheek and closed her eyes. It was sooo soft... When she opened her eyes again, she noticed how closely they were standing again. She looked up at him. She rather liked standing this close. She felt that she could almost see his face...
The next packages he handed her contained a sleeping mat and a chair she could sit in at mealtimes.
Ter'a felt very touched by Dyn's thoughtfulness and she couldn't think of what to say. Throughout her life, she couldn't remember getting many gifts... though she supposed these weren't really gifts... just necessities. Even Maz has only really gotten her things she'd needed as she grew up. Ter'a had never minded of course. Credits were tight when you ran a business and she always felt so grateful at Maz's functional gifts. Just like now.
She clutched at the blanket, her favorite of the new items, and said, "I don't know what to say..."
"You don't need to... I needed to get some stuff for you to be more comfortable... I just hope you like what I picked..."
She stepped into his chest and wrapped her arms around him. He seemed surprised, but he put his arms around her all the same. From where her head rested against his chest, she said, "I'm very grateful. It's all amazing. Thank you."
As he rubbed her back slightly, he said in response, "Anytime..."
Neither of them stepped away immediately. Neither seemed to want to break the embrace... it felt so nice to her, having him hold her like this...
The child made a noise at their feet and they separated slightly to look down, but kept their arms around each other. He wanted someone to pick him up so he could join the hug too. Ter'a smiled and Dyn sighed as he let go of her to stooped and pick him up. With the child in his arms, Dyn looked at him and he held out his tiny hands toward Ter'a. Obligingly, Dyn stepped close to her again and pulled her in with his right arm around her waist as he held the child with his left. She put her arm on Dyn's and let the child grab her index finger. He closed his eyes and smiled, and so did Ter'a.
—-
Dyn was happy. As he stood here with the kid in his left arm and Ter'a in his right, his clan felt complete. The thoughts he kept having about Ter'a threatened to invade his mind, but right now he wanted to enjoy the moment, so he forced them away.
They stood there without moving much for several minutes while the kid continued to enjoy his time with them after being in the closet for so long. He really liked Ter'a, and Dyn really trusted the kids judge of character, so it cemented Ter'a's infallibility in his mind. He looked at her and thought. He'd never had someone on his side so completely before. He'd had partners, yeah, but none that he trusted completely. He always expected to be stabbed in the back at some point... He trusted Kuill and Cara, but they were only temporary partners and Kuill had died protecting the kid. Something he thought he'd probably always feel guilty for.
After a few minutes, the kid wanted down again and so he set him down and Ter'a pulled him in for a final embrace before following the kid to the bed as he seemed to be tired now. She lifted him onto the bed and covered him with her new blanket as he curled up near Dyn's pillow.
Dyn pulled out her new mess chair and set it up next to his own. After she finished with the kid, she came and sat next to him.
"He falls asleep fast," she noted.
"Lucky..." he said.
She turned to him, brow furrowed, "Do you have trouble sleeping?"
"It depends."
"On?"
"Hm... where I am, if I have stuff on my mind, if there's danger... you know..."
She nodded, "So where do you sleep best?"
He thought for a moment... the best sleep he'd had recently was when they fell asleep together on the way to Coruscant. He didn't really recall falling asleep then. Then last night, he fell asleep almost immediately but was plagued by dreams about Ter'a. While these dreams had been of a pleasant nature, they kept waking him up in fears that he'd woken her. "Hyperspace I suppose... I guess for me, it's a place you can feel really comfortable."
"That makes sense..." she paused, and her stomach growled audibly. She put her hands over her stomach and smiled. "I didn't realize I was hungry..."
Dyn stood up and turned to the mess counter. And began to pull some tip-yip and vegetables out of the cooler. He was just pulling out a knife to chop them up when she put her hand on his arm. "Tell me what to help with."
He handed her the knife and said, "Do you want to chop vegetables?"
"Okay. What are you planning to make?"
"Tip-yip stew?"
"Sounds delicious..." she took the knife, vegetables, and cutting board to the table and began to chop them.
Dyn started the hot plate and added some oil to a pot before adding the tip-yip. After he browned it, he pulled out some tip-yip stock and Nabooan flour and added it to the pot. As he was stirring it, Ter'a said from behind him, "Are you ready for the veggies?"
Nodding, he stepped aside to let her tip the veggies into the pot. He gave it a final stir before placing the lid on it.
"How long do you cook it for?"
"About two hours." He pulled out some Kaadu jerky, sat down, and handed it to her. "Here, I know you're really hungry."
"Thanks," she sat too and accepted the jerky. "How come you don't have a droid companion? It could help you with the cooking and probably some of your work too..."
Dyn stopped chewing for a moment before continuing. He hasn't told her about his past yet... but he supposed now was as good a time as any. He swallowed. "Well..." he looked for the right words. "I was a foundling. When I was little, my parents were killed by Separatist droids. Since then," he shrugged, "I guess I've had a certain... distrust... of droids."
"Oh no... that's... Dyn that's awful."
Dyn shrugged again, "It was. They attacked our village in the morning, just after the sun had risen. Hundreds of them. My parents took me and ran, but there was nowhere to escape to." He looked down at his hands and continued. "They hid me in a grain storage closet in the ground and closed the door. A few seconds later there was an explosion outside… then gunfire… then the doors opened, and a Mandalorian from the Death Watch group held out his hand to me." He looked up at her, but she said nothing, she just stared at him with her lips parted slightly. He continued, "I took his hand, and he pulled me out of the grain closet. I didn't see my parents anywhere… the explosion had completely destroyed them. The Mandalorian picked me up and used his jetpack to take me to their ship and away from my home."
"The rest… is history I guess," he stood up and stirred the stew.
"Do you regret it? Swearing the Creed?" she asked his back.
Returning to sit he said, "No. It gave me purpose. A calling, I suppose you can call it… Do you regret becoming a Jedi?"
"I don't…" she cocked her head to look wryly at him. "…but I technically never became a Jedi. The Jedi Order was destroyed when I was only a few months into my padawan training. I had books, and Maz's guidance, and that's all," sighing she said, "I didn't get the proper guidance to remain a whole Jedi… one who operates only in the light."
"What does that mean?"
Smiling she said, "It means, I was able to follow my feelings and desires more… that path leads one down the Dark side from time to time. But as long as your heart is good, and you meditate in the Light often, you can become strong in both sides… it means that you can wield the strengths of both… and the limits of neither of your strong enough… I use the light side of the Force every day. It guides my actions and my heart, but, sometimes anger comes… or passion or other strong feelings. It is part of being… it's natural… and with it comes the Dark side of the Force. Anger, but not hatred, can wield the Dark side and still come out okay in the end… after the shadow of anger had passed. It's what makes me a Grey Jedi… the use of both the light and dark sides of the Force…
"I'm still not sure I understand," he said. He felt like he understood her premise, but he hadn't seen it yet, not really. Maybe if he saw it, he would understand.
She nodded as though she knew his thoughts, "If you saw, you would understand."
He didn't say anything, but got up and stirred the stew. It was almost ready.
"So," she said, watching him. "Have you ever made peace with your past?"
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Like you went with me to the Jedi Temple so I could get closure for my past. Have you ever done that?"
"Hmph… I don't ever want to go back there…"
She got up and walked to where he stood at the hot plate watching over the stew. He didn't look at her. He didn't want to think about his past. His childhood. That was painful, too painful… He had his life ripped from him just like she had. Didn't she understand that that was painful? He rolled his eyes… of course she did… and she'd shared that pain with him.
He turned to her and demanded, "How old were you when they first took you to the Jedi Temple to be a Jedi?"
She looked surprised at his question, but she stood her ground. "Three…"
He cocked his head. She'd had no choice to choose her path… even less so than he did. He knew that now… but perhaps Jedi believed that the Force chose their path for them? He conceded that maybe she had been right when she told him that the Force bound all living things, even those who couldn't wield it…
He turned to her, "I never wanted to go back there… but I've settled my past."
"Are you sure? Your mistrust of droids says otherwise."
He sighed. "Maybe. I don't know… Right now, I just want to focus on the kid… getting him where he needs to go…"
She nodded. She wasn't going to push that issue with him for the time being, he knew. And he was grateful. "The food is ready," he said. "Hand me those bowls." He pointed to three bowls on the other side of the mess counter.
Ter'a reached for the bowls. She knew he didn't quite seem at peace with his past, but he wasn't in the mood to discuss it. Would he ever be? She wasn't sure… Maybe it was just droids he still hadn't come to terms with…
She handed him the bowls and he took them without looking at her. Now, she began to worry that she'd really upset him. He handed her back a bowl full of the stew. It smelled delicious. He brushed past her with a second bowl and set it on the table and sat down.
She stood there with the bowl in her hands. She didn't know what to do. She wanted to apologize, but she didn't want to aggravate him further. She turned around and pulled her new mess chair into the corner with the same crate she'd used before as a table. Sitting, she set the bowl on it and began to eat.
She heard him take off his helmet and begin eating too. They sat in silence for about twenty minutes as they ate. The stew was delicious. She'd never have expected him to be a decent cook… but then, she supposed that he couldn't subsist on jerky and apples alone. She smiled to herself and looked down. Her smile vanished again as she thought about how she'd upset him. She broke her promise of waiting and doing things on his terms… Stupid, she thought, if he'd wanted to talk to her about this, or if he was ready, he would have done it already….
She sat in silence in her corner, having finished eating. She felt as though she were in time out here in the corner. Like a child. She heard him put his helmet back on and take his bowl to the mess sink and the sound of the water as he rinsed it. She heaved a deep breath… she kept feeling worse…
"Can I take that for you?" She jumped. How had she not heard him come behind her? She looked up over her right shoulder into his visor. He looked down at her. She was having trouble reading him now. He looked quite impassive. She thought he must be very annoyed with her…
She looked down at her empty bowl and handed it to him and he turned away with it without a word. After he rinsed it, he climbed the ladder to the cockpit and was out of sight.
Ter'a huffed out the breath she'd been holding, and her shoulders slumped. He was furious with her. She just knew it… She'd invaded the privacy of his past uninvited. She should have dropped it after he'd said that the rest was history. Why did she feel like she needed to pry? Needed to get him closure. Just because he'd gone with her to the Temple didn't mean that he'd want her to help him with his past. She dropped her face into her hands. She had to apologize. Not now though. She'd wait until he calmed down a bit, she'd give him some space.
Pushing the chair back from the crate, she stood and picked up the sleeping mat, blanket, and pillow he got her and took it back to her corner near the carbon freezer. She'd sleep for a while and give him his time. When she woke up in a few hours, hopefully he wouldn't be upset anymore, and she would tell him she was sorry for invading his privacy.
She laid out the mat and pillow and laid down on it, covering herself with the soft fleece blanket. Turning over to face the freezer, she closed her eyes and quickly fell asleep.
She was walking down a corridor. She looked around. She knew this place… it was the Jedi Temple. She was heading for the turbolifts that went directly to the council chamber. Why is she heading there? No one lived here anymore….
On the way she passed several statues. Who were they? She looked closer, her old master? Next was Maz, and after that was a woman with a miniscule resistance symbol tattooed to her left cheek? She didn't know her… After came a dark-skinned man with slicked back greying hair and black Imperial armor… this statue was holding the darksaber? She recognized him as Moff Gideon. How strange…
The next statue was tiny… the child? She passed it, why was this random collection of statues here?
Only her old master had been a Jedi…
She walked up to the final statue right next to the door to the lifts. Dyn. She squinted her eyes at it… then back at the others… she wished she knew what was happening.
Stepping into the lift, she didn't get a chance to push the button before the lift shuddered upwards to take her to the tallest spire of the Temple and the Jedi Council Chamber. Then, as quickly as it started, it was over… perhaps too quickly?
Confused, Ter'a waited for the doors to open. When they did, she stepped into the sunlight Council chamber and looked around. It was as empty as it had been when she was here with Dyn. But where was he? Why were all those statues there? Why was she even here?
The lift doors whooshed open behind her and she spun to come face to face with Moff Gideon. He held up the darksaber in his right hand and the child in the left by the scruff of his neck. At his feet was Dyn's body. He had run him through, front to back, with the darksaber. Right through the chest. Ter'a screamed, "NOOOOO! DYN!"
She wanted to run forward to hold him close to her, but Gideon would surely kill her. Then, without warning he held the child up in front of him and sliced him in half with the saber. "NOOOOOO! HOW COULD YOU?!" she screamed. "THE CHILD!" Gideon began to laugh, a high maniacal laugh as he began to advance on her with the darksaber raised.
He was going to try and kill her next.
She pulled out her lightsaber hilt only to find that it was the broken end of a twig from a Takodanian tree.
Gideon laughed harder still as Ter'a backed away from him and into the Emperor's desk where she tripped and fell over onto her behind.
She began to cry as she saw the bodies of Dyn and the child behind Gideon's legs. She screamed at him to leave her alone, not to kill her, but he laughed on and stalked closer to her…
"Ter'a," he said mockingly.
"NOOOO, PLEASE!"
"Ter'a!" he said, but this time it was Dyn's voice.
"STOP IT!"
"TER'A!" he shook her….
She flailed out and hit him. She was hitting every part of him she would reach and continued to cry and yell and punch.
"TER'A! Please wake up! … … PLEASE, Wake up!"
Ter'a opened her eyes and let out a breath as though she'd just come up for air after nearly drowning. She didn't know where she was, she was so disoriented. She looked around frantically and remembered that she was on the Razor Crest, with Dyn… and the child…
She looked up and Dyn bewildered and he looked back down at her.
She was breathing hard, like she'd run for miles. Her heart was racing, and she realized with a jolt that she was crying, sobbing…
She was lying on the floor, the blanket tangled at her feet. Dyn was kneeling over her holding her shoulders. And her hands hurt. A lot.
"Are you okay?" his voice was full of concern, "You were having a nightmare."
"Huh? What?" she was having trouble catching her breath as she continued to panic.
"You were screaming in your sleep. I came down here to see what was going on and you were screaming and crying…" he sounded worried.
She understood now. Her brain had finally caught up… "I was dreaming."
"Yeah…" he nodded. "What happened?"
She closed her eyes and covered them with her hand. She thought hard trying to remember. Now that she was awake, the dreams' contents were leaking out of her mind quickly. "I… I was at the Temple. There were statues…" she described them to him as best as she could remember, but she didn't forget any of them. "Then when I got to the top… to the Council chambers… Gideon was there…" She looked up at Dyn, still terrified. "He'd killed you. You were dead… at his feet. And then… then he killed the child. Then he was going to kill me too…" Tears started leaking out of the corners of her eyes again. She sniffed, "He called my name, mocking me… and then… I woke up."
"I called your name. That was me," he said quietly, sitting down on the floor facing her and she sat up. "Let me see your hands."
"What?" she was finally catching her breath.
"I think you were dreaming that he grabbed you… but that was me you were hitting. You were hitting me hard. Really hard. It had to be painful…"
She looked at her hands in her lap and gasped. She was shocked to see her knuckles bleeding and swelling. They looked like she'd been in a bar fight… Deep purple and blue bruises were already setting in.
He reached across and took her right in both of his. It hurt having it touched and she sucked in a sharp breath. Even as gentle as he was being, she couldn't but wince.
He leaned in and held her hand close to his visor, examining it. She watched him quietly as he looked and then took her left hand and looked at it too. Without saying anything, he released her, got up and walked away. She sat there, still in shock from what she'd seen in the dream. He came back with a bag and sat down again in the same place and opened the bag. She saw that it was full of medical supplies. He scooted closer to her so that their knees touched and placed her right hand on his left knee and began to clean it. He wiped it clean of blood and spread soothing bacta gel across her knuckles and then put a staple in her middle knuckle to close a particularly deep cut, before wrapping a bandage across all four knuckles.
She watched him carefully and silently as he worked. She was beginning to think more about how tender he was being with her now, than about the dream and what she saw in it.
"I'm sorry," she said in a tiny voice, as he gently placed her now bandaged hand back in her lap.
He stopped in the middle of pulling her left hand towards his right knee. "Sorry? For what?"
"For pushing you earlier," she said in the still tiny voice, "about your past." She spoke to her lap.
He set her hand on his knee and began to clean it. "No worries."
"But I am worried," she said a little stronger, "I know I made you angry."
He stopped again and looked into her face. "You didn't make me angry… you made me think."
"You… you weren't mad at me for invading your privacy?"
When he spoke, it was gentle, "You shared everything about your past with me. You've been open with me from the start. I haven't exactly returned the favor." He looked down and started to clean her wounds again.
"Then why didn't you talk to me?"
"You made me think… I guess I was lost in thought… Only in the last couple days has not being able to read my facial expressions been an issue," she heard the smile in his voice and felt silly for thinking he'd been mad at her.
"What were you thinking?"
He sighed. "About whether or not I've really made peace with my past."
"And?"
"I think I need to try and get over my distrust of droids… but I'm not sure I need to return to my home planet. I don't feel like I have any unfinished business there, if you understand?"
She nodded. "Separatist droids weren't exactly known for sentience in a positive way. I always felt like they were artificial intelligence in it's most literal and rudimentary sense…"
He looked at her and she knew he was smiling. "Maybe I should give real droids another chance then huh?"
She shrugged. "I won't force you," she smiled.
"There…" he lifted his hands from her now bandaged left hand. "How do they feel?"
"Like they've been run over…." She winced as she lifted them and flexed her fingers in front of her face.
He reached up and took her wrists and lowered her hands. "Easy. They're gunna hurt like hell for a couple days at least… you were hitting me hard…. Like your life depended on it."
"You weren't there… it was awful. He killed you. When he came out of the lift, you were just… there, dead…. At his feet… with a hole in your chest…." She looked down. Tears were threatening to come again and her lip trembled. She wasn't going to forget the image of him dead like that in a hurry…
"Hey…" Dyn reached up and stroked her cheek with his gloved thumb. "It was just a dream. Okay? I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch. He certainly was here… she was so grateful for him. Though… she'd known him only a couple of days and she couldn't believe how many times she's cried in front him already. More than she could remember crying in years… She put her hand gingerly over his. "I just can't get that image of you out of my mind…" She sniffled.
He moved his hand from her face made to pull her towards him. She obliged as he pulled her into his lap and cradled her there. He stroked her hair and wiped the tears from her eyes before they could fall. Then he laid her head against his shoulder and tilted his head to rest it on top of hers for a moment. Then in a quick, smooth movement he made to stand up, holding her in his arms and walked them to his bed.
He laid her down on it facing the wall before curling up close behind her with the child at their feet. The kid slept a lot…
"Don't turn around please," he whispered in her ear. Then to her great surprise, she heard him take his helmet off and set it above their heads.
He reached his left arm up and over her and pulled her close against him. She felt his breath against her hair and smiled as she covered his hand with her own tender, bruised and bandaged hand. She felt a jolt as her hand touched the bare skin of his hand. He'd taken off his gloves too… her smile grew for a moment before she nestled herself against him and they fell asleep in each others' arms with nothing in between them.