The compound was silent. It was a huge change from the usual bustle of the sprawling Fel home and the hectic - and, at times, downright chaotic - Ebon Hawk, so Carth took a moment to take it all in. For the first time in months - or, if he thought back far enough, years - he was finally alone with his thoughts. It was unfamiliar yet welcomed territory.
He sighed deep before making his way down the stairs of the home and heading toward the courtyard bar.
The salty Manaan air was cool and crisp, just as he liked it. To his surprise, he'd already grown accustomed to the piscine odor of Manaan and, as a result, was able to fully enjoy the beautiful evening. It was quiet, save for the occasional chatter of the Ahto City patrol units just beyond the gates and the not-so-far-off crashing of waves. Nights like this reminded him of simpler times on his beloved Telos. Perhaps I'll settle down after this mission is complete he thought before quickly determining he was much too young for retirement. If Carth was honest with himself, he knew he'd probably die in the cockpit of a Republic ship. Whether his death was caused by an enemy strike or simply from old age remained to be seen.
He glanced at the long rectangular table where the crew of the Hawk had gathered before all hell had broken loose on the ocean world. Penn, Bastila, and Nikolaj were off doing Force-knows-what. Juhani and Canderous were on the Ebon Hawk plotting something he was sure he wanted absolutely no part of. Latch was visiting a friend, though where or who this friend of the elder Fel was was beyond him. Shefali was still analyzing documents related to Yannai's case at the Ahto City jailhouse. And, oddly enough, he had witnessed Mission scampering after Jolee on the streets below through his bedroom window a few hours prior. Isabet left the compound earlier in the day yet, to his knowledge, still hadn't come back to the compound.
A rush of anxiety filled his gut. He did his best to temper the rush of emotions. He wasn't concerned about his other crewmates, though, admittedly, none of his other crewmates stirred him in the same way Isabet did. Carth shook his head, trying his best to rid his mind of the Mandalorian and focus on the task at hand: a night of rest and relaxation.
He crouched behind the bar and scanned the labels of the Fel's wide array of available sweet wines and strong spirits. As he finally found the amber bottle he'd been searching for, the stillness of the night was broken.
"C'mon, damnit. C'mon… Damnit! Fuck! FUCK!" Isabet slammed her balled fists on the tabletop, causing the wealth of electronic pieces, cables, and bits of scrap metal to bounce. Most of the pieces stayed on the table; a few bits and tools fell to the floor, causing clangs and clunks to echo in the near empty workroom. "C'mon, c'mon!"
Unbeknownst to Carth, the Mandalorian had been working in the small workroom off the courtyard for hours in a futile effort to strengthen the signal of her com-link. It had been more than two weeks since she had last made contact with her eldest brother, Arioch, on Korriban and the worry was beginning to eat away at her. Arioch had taken the assignment of looking for Mandalore's mask on the most dangerous of the four worlds their clan planned to search because he perceived himself to be the toughest and most cunning of the Caderas, a perception of which Isabet was never fully convinced. Something was wrong. She knew it.
Carth heard Isabet's frustrated pleas to her handiwork from behind the bar and questioned if he should say anything. Since their meeting on Kashyyyk, the two had been spending more and more time together. Carth had been racked with guilt for spending time with a woman who had unknowingly accomplished a feat he'd previously thought impossible: shifting his thoughts from his late wife and the idyllic life they had shared on Telos. The pilot stood completely still, realizing Isabet was probably unaware of his presence in the compound.
As the silence of the night set in once more, he weighed the pros and cons of checking on Izzy. However, as he stood, Carth heard something he did not expect.
Though quiet, the sound of a woman crying was unmistakable. Using the few stealth techniques he had learned from his years in the service and from Penn, Carth tip-toed toward the workroom where Isabet sat.
As he carefully poked his head into the alcove, Carth could see Isabet's back was facing the door. It was dark - the only light in the room was provided by an unnatural orange glow from a focus lamp attached to the bench. Her silhouette was trembling ever so slightly, though her deft hands continued moving, picking up various pieces from the table. She paused only to wipe her face with her sleeve. Deducing this was not the moment for him to intervene, Carth began to turn.
"What do you want?" Isabet grunted, doing her best to hide the hitch in her voice brought on by the onslaught of tears.
"I-uh," Carth stammered. "I-I just heard you from the courtyard and wanted to make sure you were -"
"I'm not ok, Republic," Isabet coolly interrupted as she turned. In the faint light, Carth could see the wet, silvery trail of tears streaking down her cheeks. The pilot stood silently in the doorway, clearly unsure of what to say next. His evident confusion elicited an unexpected half-smile from Izzy. "What?" she snorted. "Did you not think Mandalorians were able to cry?" She motioned to the unopened bottle of alcohol in his grasp. There was only one tumbler in Carth's hands, but that never stopped Izzy before. "Care to share?" she asked, gracefully stooping to the floor and crossing her legs.
He wordlessly answered her second question by walking close to Izzy and the workbench, lowering himself to the floor, and handing her the unopened bottle. She unceremoniously uncorked the decanter with her teeth and took a healthy swig before handing it back to the pilot. Isabet ran her fingers through her long auburn hair before resting her elbows on her knees. "Com-link?" Carth asked as he picked up one of the fallen pieces and underhand tossed it back to the table. He knew she'd gone out for parts earlier and deduced this was the source of her frustration.
"Yeah," she bluntly replied. "Still can't get a connection to Ari though." She wiped her face one last time before gesturing for him to return the alcohol to her. When he selected the Bakuran bitters from the bar, Carth had intended on mixing it with something else since it was entirely too bitter and entirely too strong for him. However, leaving Isabet alone on the floor to retrieve a mixer seemed inappropriate. So, he sat and drank, silently hoping he'd be able to stand back up free-of-incident when the time came.
The two sat in silence for a while, passing the bottle back and forth before Isabet finally spoke. "I already lost one brother," she said flatly, staring at the blank wall in front of her as she thought of Callum and his sacrifice on Kashyyyk. "If anything happened to Ari on Korriban… I just don't think I could live through losing one more."
Carth slowly nodded. His late wife always teased that moments of vulnerability were never his strong suit. Yet, he felt the urge to try relating to the Mandalorian, just as he had during their time on the forest world. "That's how I felt when I lost all the brothers-in-arms on the Endar Spire and on Telos," he said quietly, contemplating the ramifications of sharing some of his deepest pains. "I -"
"Oh, c'mon, Republic," Izzy sharply interrupted, snatching the bottle from his hands as she swung it about wildly. "You and I both know damn well that's not the same thing. This is my family. My clan. My flesh and blood. Don't try to make me feel better with that bullshit."
While the shared drink had made Isabet more thorny than usual, the spirit had the opposite effect on Carth. It made him far more open and free. Despite the tongue-lashing, he persevered. "When Telos was attacked, I lost my wife," Carth said flatly, adopting the same tone Isabet had used moments earlier as he mentally prepared himself to talk about his lost family. "But I also lost my son… Dustil…"
He'd meant to say more, but the words wouldn't seem to come out. Instead of sharing his story as he'd intended, the name "Dustil" hung heavy in the air. Finally, after a long while, Isabet broke the silence as she extended the bottle she'd stolen from Carth during a flash of anger earlier. A peace offering. "I'm sorry, Carth," she said quietly, marking one of the few times she'd called him by his given name and not the nickname she'd bestowed upon him. "You'd mentioned your wife -"
"Morgana," he interrupted, sharing far more than even he had anticipated. "Her name was Morgana."
"Morgana," Izzy slowly and deliberately enunciated, before continuing on. "You'd mentioned her before and I'd figured she's who you meant when you said you lost your best friend on Telos." She paused, noticing Carth's cocked brow. "I'm brash and loud, not stupid. I can put two and two together," she chided before taking a deep breath, not quite knowing how to go on without revealing too much of herself in the process. Isabet touched her scar. Even through the fog of her mind brought about by the alcohol, she still had control of her words. "I just… I just hadn't realized you'd lost a son."
Thanks to the alcohol, Carth nodded more slowly than he'd intended. "After Karath attacked Telos, I hopped on the first Republic cruiser headed back home," he continued, anxiously twisting his wedding ring and finding himself hopelessly unable to stop sharing his story. "I dug through the rubble with my bare hands and found Morgana but, uh…" he paused, "she was beyond saving. She died in my arms."
In a display of support, Izzy leaned forward to gently rest her hand on his thigh. The tips of Carth's ears warmed and turned red, but if the Mandalorian noticed, she graciously kept the observation to herself. "And your son?" she asked, knowing full-well this line of questioning was teetering a fine line. "When you found him -"
"We never did," Carth corrected, hanging his head low. "My father-in-law and I searched day and night, but we never found him. After a week, the Republic called on me to hunt down Karath and I knew that's where I belonged. I've been searching for Dustil and Karath ever since," he explained before quietly adding, "and I'll never stop."
After all Carth had shared, Isabet longed to be just as vulnerable as he. However, she restrained her words as some of the most painful portions of her life involved a fellow crewmate. Instead, her vulnerability manifested itself through her body language. In a single fluid motion, Isabet rolled onto her knees, then twisted her body to sit down next to him. Closing what little space remained between them, Isabet scooted closer to Carth, wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and rested her head on him. "We'll find them," Isabet quietly promised as she closed her eyes.
We'll find them.
We.
Carth mentally repeated Izzy's statement thousands of times in a matter of seconds. What did "we" mean? he wondered, though he dare not voice that question aloud. Instead, he tried to clear his mind and followed his instinct of gently resting his head against Izzy's and inhaled deep. Her hair smelled of apricot, saffron, and honey, just like his late wife's. But, instead of thinking of Morgana as he inhaled the familiar scent, he only thought of the woman sitting beside him and the intensifying fondness he felt for her.
Carth lifted his head before touching Isabet's scarred chin and gently tilting it toward him. Isabet opened her eyes and looked directly at the man beside her before closing them again and moving her face toward his. She sensed his lips were edging closer to hers, too.
Just as they felt one another's nervous breaths on their lips, the unexpected happened. "Anyone in here?" Mission innocently inquired, bathing the once-dark room with stark, bright light with the simple flip of the switch as she searched for her friends. "Oop!" she squealed, recognizing the moment she'd just interrupted. "Don't mind me!"
Both Carth and Isabet scrambled away from one another, seemingly unable to get enough room between them. Each was far more intoxicated than they'd previously thought. Izzy leapt to her feet before grabbing the workbench for support, struggling to ignore the blood rushing to her head. Carth worked feverishly to lift himself off the floor, though it was a slower-than-usual process. His ribs still ached from Dral's brutal beating on Kashyyyk.
"You-uh, you didn't interrupt anything," Carth lied as he clutched his side, trying to sound casual as he avoided Isabet's gaze at all costs.
Thankfully, she had a similar idea. "We were looking for a piece I dropped," Izzy continued, searching hopelessly for one of the pieces she'd flipped off the table before kicking it closer to Mission. "See? Found it!" she exclaimed in an unnatural pitch and highly-manufactured laugh. "Thanks for the help, Republic," she called before rushing past Mission, leaving the pilot and the Twi'lek in uncomfortable silence.
Unwilling to subject himself from the onslaught of questions Carth had no doubt Mission would heap upon him, he followed Isabet's lead. "Well, time for bed," he explained, his voice far more high than usual, as he scooted past her. "Goodnight, Mission."
"G'night, you two," Mission smirked, endlessly thrilled by the thought of a second couple aboard the Ebon Hawk. "Sleep tight."
A/N: It's been a while since I've said this… but thanks for reading! I hope all of you are safe and healthy during these crazy times.
According to FFN, it's been a little over four years (four years?!) since I last updated this story or logged into my account. For those who have stuck with me and this fic for years - if you're still out there, THANK YOU for your patience and understanding. My intent was NEVER to abandon this fic - writing it was a saving grace. To be completely candid, this fic started as a fun, creative outlet for me as I dealt with serious depression and escaping to another world was endlessly helpful (don't worry - I'm in a much better place now). However, demanding jobs, juggling relationships, and, well, trying to figure out life left me with little time to write and, for that, I sincerely apologize.
With all that said, I'm sincerely looking forward to reconnecting with this fic and with all of you. This chapter was on the shorter side so everyone had a chance to get reacquainted (or acquainted, if you're new here) with the story. I've also taken the liberty of updating some of the older chapters I wasn't as pleased with (as silly as it sounds, when I started this fic I didn't realize you could alter storylines in a FF [which is why the early chapters are much more in line with the game]). The changes aren't major - mostly just updating some dialogue and fleshing things out a bit so they don't seem so rushed.
Anyhow, that's enough rambling from me. If you liked what you read, please take a moment to leave a review, follow, and/or fav. Looking forward to FINALLY diving into chapter 39 - Sith Base, here we go!