penumbra: a little bit of light around a whole lot of dark

"She doesn't even blink. I'm saying, she can look a man in the eyeballs while he's dying, she doesn't look away, she doesn't blink."

"I understand."

"So she doesn't freak out, or get hard to deal with, is what I'm saying, which I feel could be of use to you in your line of work. Barely makes any noise. And there's the rest."

"Yes. Please, explain it to me in full. The original pitch was intriguing but incomplete."

"Well, we're businessmen, is all I'm saying, Darth Vikton. You want to reel in your catch, you got to put the right bait on."

"Is that correct?"

"Y- not, of course, to be suggesting anything. That you're baited."

The drawn, amber-eyed man smiles after a moment, then laughs. The pirate laughs. His crew laughs harder.

"Of course not," says the Darth, smiling broadly. "You're an intelligent businessman, Captain Halley."

"I am that. And this girl here, she's been my golden ticket."

Darth, Captain, and crew turn to watch her. The barefoot little girl lies on her stomach in the corridor, sketching something on a rag with a stub of charcoal. She is frighteningly thin. Her tunic is fraying through at the shoulder blades and elbows, and there are hollows in her cheeks, not easily visible under the thick mess of black hair.

"She sometimes-"

"Do you feed her?"

"What?"

The Darth inclines his cheek on his hand. "Feed her. Daily. At her stage of development, malnourishment can permanently stunt the growing body and brain."

"She's not that young. About eleven."

The brows lower. "She looks six. Tell her to present herself."

"Lemma!" The captain smacks the wall. "Stand up. Turn around."

The girl stands, brushing her black-dusted hands on her tunic. Her height and weight are even more clearly stunted. She can't be more than 45 pounds. Without expression, she rotates herself in a circle. Her head seems overlarge for the rest of her, trailing with snarled, waist-length hair. A collar stands out on her dirty neck.

"We even give her candy when she does a good job, as training. Rock candy, see?" The pirate points to a jar on the shelf rather defensively. "She gets enough. Plenty."

"I understand. Please, continue."

"Lemma! Keep drawing. So, watch her. Sometimes- might be hard to believe, but we've got the records- she draws ideas of what's going to happen in the future. Ideas that there's no way she could've known. Battle outcomes, ships we'll meet with, people, places. We- well, we've tried getting her to be specific, when there's something coming up, but she can't seem to do it on purpose. It's not like she knows what's going on. Just draws, and something turns out the way she put it."

"Any other talents?"

"Oh, yeah." The captain grins, picking up his bottle to pour a glass of cold Phattro. "Let me tell you about our favorite game, me and the guys."

Darth Vikton smiles, running a finger down the bridge of his nose. "I love games."

"That's what I'm talking about. The way it is- when we're making a deal with some spacer, we'll dock with him, bring him in here, settle the terms, make it pretty easy on him. Lot of the time, he'll start getting cocky. Thinking he can pull one over on us. So he might start flexing those terms. Playing us. 'Well, I don't know that I can make it as many credits as that. I've got another crew on the line that can do the job for a song.' You know how it is. We shake his hand, he's about to step back to his ship, feeling real good about himself. Good times for everyone. And then we call her in." The captain points to the girl. "We show her the guy, and we ask her, 'hey, Lemma. Deal or no deal?'"

Vikton's eyes don't leave the small shape of her. He nods.

"And if the spacer's been straight with us, she looks him up and down, and she says 'deal.' He laughs. Good times. We do his job. We get paid fair. She gets a candy." He grunts, cranking his armchair back a notch. "But very much of the time, he's not being straight with us."

"No deal."

"No deal, she says. Points with that little finger. 'No deal.' And we know he's been set to cheat us blind."

"And you kill him, before raiding his ship for everything he owned."

"You get it, Darth Vikton. That's how it goes." The captain taps two fingers below his eyes, growing very quiet, for the effect. No sound comes but the hum of the ship and the scratch of Lemma's charcoal. "She doesn't blink at it. Never. Spacer's begging, screaming, lying any kind of way, but it doesn't faze her. And those nights, our little girl gets to pick out two candies."

"I understand." Vikton's chair slides out. A tall, crow's-footed man, nondistinct but for the sharpness of his amber eyes, he paces to the back of the living area, then returns. He walks with no hurry. When he points to the captain, his smile is cold, mild, and slow, like a snake taking its time to uncoil. "You have trained her, Captain Halley. With the variable of an additional piece of candy- the only color or pleasure for her on this ship, the only sign of affection ever given to her- you train her to condemn businessmen like yourselves. Perhaps even to enjoy their condemnation. You have taught her this with great diligence, I believe. Your lives are worth rock candy to her."

"I don't see how that's anything special." The pirate shrugs, unabashed. "They're just worth credits to me."

"Very good, Captain." Vikton claps once, as if breaking a spell, and laughs. The captain laughs. The crew laughs with them. "I am prepared to offer you the sum of thirty thousand credits for Lemma, provided that I can leave with her tonight."

Halley whistles. "I'll say that's pretty good. Pretty good. Not your market value for a young'n. And that would be with her collar on, or taken off? Detonator chip installed? We've got a doc on board if you want it done."

"The collar and chip won't be necessary. I can handle her discipline myself. As a matter of curiosity, where did you find her in the first place?"

"Took her off some colonists' ship a few years back. Was going to pitch her out the airlock with her folks- too skinny to get a real price on the market, and too young for, you know, but one of the guys caught sight of this picture she'd been scrawling before we busted in. It was us. Dead-on, it was. And she wasn't crying or nothing. Just looking at us. Waiting. She knew the run of it."

"Do you recall a surname for her?"

"Not a thing. She never told us, anyway. We got 'Lemma' off the label inside her coat."

"I imagine my own will do equally well. Is our business concluded? I have a long way to fly from here, and I would like to get started as soon as possible."

"By all means, my lord. Wouldn't want to detain you." The captain winks. "There's only one more thing, of course- you'll want to see her talent demonstrated, and we've- well, it's a tradition, like I told you. Always some fun for the crew, to see how it turns out...and seeing how good your business is, there's nothing to fear, is there?"

"I understand perfectly. Call her, then."

"Lemma, come here."

The girl rises up again, folding her drawing into her tunic, and walks to the table. Halley brushes her hair off her face, turning her chin so she can best be seen. There is some scarring visible at a closer range.

"Might be pretty when she's clean. Might just be," he says knowingly. "Some of you Sith have interests, I'm aware, and it's not of any concern to me, long as she's paid for. But no refunds."

Vikton laughs harshly. Brightness flashes through his eyes like a sun splintering over amber. "You have a remarkable sort of awareness, Captain Halley."

"I try. I do that. Lemma, this is Darth Vikton. He means to take you tonight. Why don't you play for us one more time before you go? You think he's got a deal...or no deal?"

Lemma regards the men without reacting. Her hands are loose at her sides, and her chin is lifted. Halley's buddy-buddy grin turns down into a grimace. He belts her across the face, stumbling her, but earns no response.

"Sometimes you just got to recalibrate her. She's going to do it. Answer me, girl. Answer! Deal or no deal?"

When his hand comes down again, Vikton catches it out of the air.

"You must be doing it incorrectly," he says, and kneels down to her level, as tall as he is, black robes pooling around his feet. "It's your decision, Lemma." His hands are moving as well, but far faster than Halley's- something comes out of his belt, a saber, and he flicks it outward and lights it red as casually as someone might throw a ball, and it illuminates their faces in arterial pallor. Halley scrambles backward. His crew has stood up- started to stumble over each other in retreat.

A tiny smile dimples her strange, gaunt face. "No deal."

"Don't blink," Vikton says, tapping her on the nose. "I've heard great things about you."

She shakes her head, turning to watch.

"You heard her, gentlemen." The lightsaber drags a plasma scar across the floor. Vikton goes at a leisurely pace. Halley makes a horrible sound, like an animal's scream, as he seems to attempt to climb up the wall. "I commend you. It seems you've made your catch of the day."

He is in no hurry. As he takes the long walk toward the pirate crew, he turns his hand clockwise. The jar tips from the high shelf, slowly spilling an ocean of rock candy to the floor. More and more fall in crescendo until the jar is left empty. Lemma scoops a rainbow of broken crystals into her hands and licks her fingers clean.

Tucked into her tunic, Korriban's charcoal columns ascend to a blackened sky.

(Installment from a Legends-era shared OC 'verse! One of several?)