"Master?"
The Star Map painted wormy lines and fantastically squished circles on crimson robes; the Disciple suppressed a grin on sight of the much-abused gift from Onderon's Queen. Not two days ago, the Exile had still -- to quote the equine's mouth -- been struggling over "nefarious needles" and "torturesome threads". The historian part was gratified that one of few relics from the lost Academy of Ossus was not to suffer the fate of yesterday's trash. The part who lived with one moody rogue, two aloof soldiers, two quirky droids, and three incomprehensible women, had been guilty of relief when repair had been completed to the Jedi Master's satisfaction.
To term the Exile a perfectionist boggled even the Iridonian's powers of understatement.
Mical had been amused, at first. The Exile was unnervingly silent in combat -- no war-cries, no challenges, most certainly not anything as mortal as grunts -- just the sizzle of light or whoosh of blades. Nor was she big on social pleasantries, like "how was your day, Mical?" or "any good 'vids lately?". Apparently, though, self-talk warranted garrulity. To the Disciple's awe, it was evidently possible to curse both conception and lineage of the entire weaver's art without once resorting to profanity.
"Master?" he tried again, but the upturned face did not waver from the fascinating bisection of starry points. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of an armored figure loitering halfway between starboard and cockpit.
Mical frowned. Not only was the Mandalorian allowed to eavesdrop whatever he fancied (which was pretty much everything), the Exile seemed habituated if not quite oblivious to the less-than-spotless presence. Jedi Masters were famously convoluted in thinking and practice, but still...
In treacherous moments, the recently concluded Cold War appealed for having forced on the Mandalorian the decency to stay out of the Master's -- and thus everyone else's -- way. He had certainly fallen back to old haunts swiftly enough.
Surely someone should have deigned to educate the Disciple on the Art of Obscure Reasoning and Confounding Behavior, seeing as he was supposedly to chair the next Jedi Council.
His disgruntlement had little positive and much negative effect on the suit, if the amused derision it managed to telegraph, lack of facial features notwithstanding, was anything to go by. Mical had eventually to tear his eyes from the doomed staring match.
"Mas--" the Disciple began patiently (again), then cut himself short. When in such a state, the Exile answered to few things of non-threatening and/or non-physical nature; "Master" was not one of them.
"Reni?" The name tripped awkwardly from his tongue. In this one thing Mical found common ground with the Zabrak tech -- the familiarity the Master insisted (or tried to) on would ever taint of disrespect by their accounts.
"Hmmm?"
"It is I, Master Renani."
"Mmmm hmmm."
He shifted weight several times, whiling away a full minute.
"Mical! How long have you been here? Why didn't you say something?"
One Mandalorian snorted. Two Jedi ignored him.
"If you are busy..." the Disciple began politely, even if the Master had evidently not been doing much of anything (discernable). Who knew what exalted mysteries her ilk pondered in their spare time?
Of course, one could argue that since he couldn't name a single sentient, Jedi or no, who could plausibly be ranked within "her ilk", the issue was moot anyway.
"No, no, just thinking." A dismissive hand waved the miniature galaxy farewell. "You know me, always free for the latest crisis."
Mical had long since admitted that most of the Master's humor sailed like fabool over his iriaz. If that set the others to call him stodgy, so be it.
"I too, have been thinking," he began tentatively. A raised brow encouraged. "About the new Order, and details they, we" -- he corrected -- "must be prepared to address." Retroactively, he tried to smooth away a grimace that had snuck in unawares.
"Don't get too hung up over ee's and tee's, Mical. Airs and gospel were not amongst things to its credit."
The scholar in him puzzled over the unfamiliar idiom, but postponed curiosity for a nod. "I" -- it had become easier, at daunting speed, to speak of the Jedi Restoration in first person -- "have no desire to see past follies reenacted, I assure you. Yet history cannot be learned from if it is not studied."
She reciprocated the acknowledgment, waited expectantly for a point.
The Disciple took a breath. "Lately, I have been studying the Jedi rank system."
The Exile frowned, exuding that it was a subject she neither cared much for nor about.
He was dogged. "It was quite odd, that I could find no reference to Revan's Class. Her entrances to Padawan and Knight status were noted of course, but not whether she was Guardian, Sentinel, or Consular, as I rather anticipated."
Personable though she was, the Master's inner thoughts were unreadable at the best of times. At the moment, the Disciple would have had better luck locating the late Master Vrook's sweetmallow interior.
"I also could not find," he continued with a touch of caution when no response seemed forthcoming, "any reference to your Class, Master Renani."
Distinct lack of surprise at his second revelation. At long last the Exile performed one of her full-body shakes and issued a rueful chuff. "There's no deep, dark secret about it, Mical. Revan and I were not in those rosters for a simple reason. We were neither."
"I am... confused."
"There is no confusion, there is the farce."
He wondered if he looked as pained as he felt.
"Sorry, Disciple. A good question, one that did not deserve being made light of."
He fidgeted, uncomfortable.
"You know the party line: 'Jedi trainees are exposed to a wide variety of subjects to help them find venues best suited'."
All chronicler senses ratcheted to alert by the distinct scent of "story, incoming!", the Disciple nodded. Shadow-on-silver shifted in peripheral vision, provoking a spurt of resentment he could not have done anything about even had he wanted to... or was so admonished by the Jedi Code.
"Revan could not decide on what didn't interest her. I could not decide on what did."
She could not? The Exile he knew and remembered pursued goals with daunting intensity. Pale brows shot up, but Mical kept his own counsel and prompted, "What happened?"
A loose shrug. "Nothing. We drifted around far past the respectable age for Padawan-hood. Revan turned down scores of Masters who would've Leapt to take her on. Eventually we drifted into the path of the Jedi Scholar. As you might expect, Revan's specialties were xenography, astrobiology, game theory, psychosociology, anything she could gobble up on martial arts." A tight smile. "Anything and everything about communication was Revan's personal obsession, and you know the Echani take on combat."
An exposition on Revan's deeds, Revan's motivations. "And of Padawan Renani?"
Surprise jerked dark eyes from drifting off-focus, before the Exile caught and wiped it away. "Her?" A deprecating gesture. "Oh, a little this and that, whatever caught her fancy."
Hurt was not justified, but then emotion had never been a logical creature. "I will understand if you do not wish to talk about it..."
"No, no, I'm not trying to brush you off. It the truth, really. I had little direction. Never did find my calling, not unless you can call leading tens of thousands to their deaths, or setting up the end of an entire people."
"You only did what needed to be d--"
"Done?" Her eyes glittered; it may have been flicker from the holo-galaxy, but that did not mean that Mical liked it. "That is the only mantra that lets me sleep, some time after all the allies and innocents I plowed down to 'cauterize' the 'infection' finish screaming."
It had started out such an innocent conversation... ...and does that, that nackhawn of a Mandalorian have to hover so?
"Ah, don't look like that, Mical. Those are my nightmares, not yours. I should never have brought them up. Let's see, we were trying to justify years hopping from one subject to the other? There was one theme I stayed true to, I suppose."
He perked up slightly, more than happy to play along with the obvious redirection.
"The Force."
Before Disciple had time to revert to confused (he'd since lost count anyway), the Exile clarified.
"No, the Masters didn't let me off easy. All Jedi learn to connect to the Force, to use it, to listen. Research is more inclined towards, well, I suppose what you could call the, uhm, mechanical aspects of the Force. Cataloguing, developing techniques, though it was metaphysics that interested me most. How does the Force 'come from Life'? What makes a sentient Sensitive? Is the Force localized, or just perception of it?"
Mical corrected a slacking jaw, only to wince at the embarrassing click of teeth.
One corner of the Exile's lips lifted, though (he hoped) not at his antics. "You can imagine how overwhelmingly popular such blasphemous lines of inquiry were. Still, a couple of Masters were... supportive. And, just before the War..."
Questioner suddenly found himself questioned by piercing black orbs. Mical tried not to squirm like the Padawan he was, tried not to imagine all types of behind-the-scenes weighing of how much he was capable of handling.
The Disciple was not unaware that the others viewed him as naive. He was not that forgiving of being thought some unthinking hanger-on, to Jedi principles in general and their Master's teachings in particular. Idealism, he maintained, is a profession requiring diligence leagues above paranoia, pragmatism, or passivity.
Judgment lifted quite suddenly to snap magnetically to holo-Coruscant, or at least insofar as Mical could pinpoint. The Exile addressed the silver spot in its blue glyph-cage, voice reliving memory.
"Before the War, I wondered: could 'Light' and 'Dark' sides of the Force be a matter of biology?"
Two purple beams, the shorter the more nimble, whirled out of the way of a green diagonal-slash. Deprived of contact, green overshot, but rather than attempt regroup it finished low, wielder in a crouch with one leg swept forth to trip. The afterimage of the twin blades painted bows high in the air as the other contestant leapt. Then, the flurry of activity tamed down to a circling of color around color.
The Exile watched behind half-lidded eyes. Touch the Sight, as Visas taught. Just a graze, don't let sentients drown out lesser auras.
...lightsabers were tattle-tales... Pick out the lone satellite -- there, smoothly tethered by umbilical cord. Wielder comfortable with weapon, in control.
...the one sanctioned jealousy of their Jedi wielders... Easier to notice the double orbits, and not just by number. Newly-taken grafts, strong pulse. An invested wielder.
...a last lesson from an old mentor's Dancing Lightsabers, one the student had not managed to replicate. See-ing the inanimate was not exactly staple in "Padawan's Guide to Constructing Lightsabers", or even "Knight's Guide to Understanding Lightsabers". But that was alright -- Reni might have found destiny and purpose in war, but only after and aside a first lasting love in learning.
Besides, light-shows were pretty.
Purple crisscrossed in a wild net that green escaped by a shave. Any melee instructor -- or passable blade-user, Force optional -- could have pointed out that the bearer was a little too reckless, a little too aggressive, to be fighting calm.
The shorter beam winked out; the green wavered in surprise. The remaining purple swooped into that window, at just the right angle and impact to send green spinning off to deck-sparking end in a couple meters' distance. The third beam flamed to existence as if it had never left, the tip of the incandescent river flowing towards...
Att--! Tongue smarted from the clamp of teeth that aborted verbalization. It did not do to startle duelers.
"Atton," the Jedi Master admonished, when capable of speaking volume.
Lethality hovered over bare throat a shade too long before the aggressing beams subsided. The orphaned blade hissed sparks at where it intersected the (fortunately) cortosis-enforced ground.
"Sorry." A throwaway word, an afterthought.
A blond head shook cautiously before Disciple made to retrieve his 'saber.
"That was a neat trick, Atton," Reni commended before sternness. "But you let emotions take over."
"Hey, can I help it if--" he caught himself with a flex of fist, then forced a sheepish grin. "Guess I still have... things to work out, huh."
The pilot turned to the historian, who had clipped 'saber back onto belt and now held a hand gingerly over his neck. White-blue shimmered under his palm and discomfort ebbed from his face.
"Sorry, Disciple," Atton managed a little more sincerity.
"Glad we're on the same side," Mical returned, but not without an understandable caution.
Her headaches were all of the tension variety, or so their elected doctor had assured the Exile. That, even she could have self-diagnosed.
Anybody can learn to fight. Detaching from battle is where most fail... she mused, only realizing that she had done so out loud when a disbelieving grunt answered.
"Yeah yeah, it's the Jedi thing and all, but we can't all be good little automatons."
Mical seemed as surprised as Reni by the renewed hostility the speaker gifted him.
"I have never tried to preach emotionlessness." Hurt laced her voice despite all efforts. She had never tried to preach anything, at least not by intention.
Atton still had trouble meeting her eyes, but did not need it to enhance the sneer in his posture.
The other trio had by then peeled off various positions to gather around. Just as easily had the mantle of Instructor and Imparter-of-Wisdom slipped round her neck; Reni only checked once per hour these days to see whether it was on backwards.
"The day we walk into battle and feel nothing is the day to forsake our blades," she argued, "but to let emotions do our thinking is more dangerous than any move of the enemy's."
"Y'all know how much I 'love' to agree with joker," Mira indicated the accused with her head, "but I dunno. I mean, it's obviously bad to go all Sithy with rage and all, but I've seen fear and, uhm" -- green eyes slid only to snap back as quickly -- "well, love make people do some amazing things."
The Exile shook a negatory. "Those are things to fight for, not with. Most of the Masters, on Coruscant, Dantooine, taught that Jedi should aspire to be completely uninfluenced by emotion. They said that Sith go the opposite extreme, exaggerating emotions to drive themselves in combat."
A wistful, half-embarrassed smile crossed her lips. "A few arrogant Padawans decided that both were wrong. If a person feels no love, no hate, no fear, no anger, why not just walk away or kill everyone off to get some peace? On the other hand, passions lend strength and speed at cost of rationality. A person consumed by hate refuses to consider consequences. A person blinded by love refuses to see avenues."
"Hate to break it to ya, sister, but that helps us do what, exactly?"
"I'm not explaining at all, am I?" The Jedi Master stalled by combing imaginary strands back from her forehead. "I'm trying to say that combat should always be a means to an end, no more. Concentrate on the goal, and if there are other, less... irrevocable routes, by all means take it. Don't trap yourself into thinking that the rush of a fight can ever resolve the emotions that motivated it."
"Is that how you did it, General?" Bao-Dur looked at her keenly. "You were always at the front lines, yet always calm, focused. No matter how many atrocities we witnessed. No matter how many we saw fall."
Her head dipped and remained down. "It might not have seemed so, but I felt, I felt each death. Stopping the underlying cause -- not symptoms -- was just so much more important than..." Reni trailed off, tucked hands behind back in instinctual parade rest. "It is a cold, strategist's view. In retrospect, the Jedi shedding of emotion is cleaner, the Sith embrace of feeling more honest. I only know how to postpone the messy bits."
"Retreat is as much a tactic as advance, inaction also an action," Visas observed. "The great employ each to equal effect."
Reni looked up sharply at that resonance with something not quite in memory, but the seer's aura read only of thoughtful contemplation.
Mira tugged at the knot holding a light-pink half-top, a motion that riveted a certain pair of dark eyes and sent the other two off on random tangents. The huntress glared at the first and primly adjusted the hem to a (slightly) more concealing length. "Can't believe I'm going to say this, but you, you kind of made sense, you know? Huh." She shook her head with an exaggerated shudder. "I'm really starting to scare myself."
A twitch threatened the Exile's lips; it definitely brightened her eyes. "The indomitable Huntress? I'm flattered."
"Oh, fu-u-u-unny. I'm just saying, this teacher thing might just work out. Maybe." Mira was quick to backtrack. "Doesn't mean we're going to go easy on you though, so don't blow that head up yet."
One issue of overdone-pout. Insert piteous whine: "What, no first dibs in the 'fresher for your wise old Master?"
Mira and Visas were first out the door.
Bao-Dur shook his head at the self-proclaimed sage's antics, a reprove spoilt completely by curled lips. He left her with a quiet "We all knew how much you grieved, General."
Reni's own smile faded with the echo of footsteps. Only line-of-sight made it to the exit; body remained, arms crossed, hands each gripping a shoulder.
Light and dark shifted in a corner, a conspicuous absence ended by ceasefire.
"That was... almost Mandalore."
She tilted her head to study the near-compliment. /#Our Clans are not so different in motive, only in execution.#/
Two veterans exchanged cordial, if slightly wary, nods.
At least one corner of the universe had made it back to place.
Mira, bounty-huntress with a most inconvenient conscience, frowned at the familiar sight of a veiled head bent over a messy bunk. Her own sheets, comfortably tangled about legs, were still nowhere near as hopelessly contorted as those the Miraluka struggled with.
"Sheesh, Visas," she said by way of morning greeting, "I think Exile's old enough to make her own bed, don't you?"
Clad arms (the woman is positively paranoid about showing skin) paused briefly before resuming toil. "I am unsure about Humans, but my people are taught living skills at an early age."
"Huh? Well, we are too, except for spoilt princess types I suppose." The activity continued for barely a minute before she exploded with, "Would you just stop that!"
The slim figure righted, and the sensation assaulted Mira of being looked at with puzzlement, though if anybody knew what passed for eyes behind that lace they sure weren't telling. Surprise. The Exchange has nothing to this bunch when it comes to secrets.
"In what should I desist?" Visas employed the same mildness in everything from asking who was in the 'fresher (two guesses...) to eradicating Sith.
Mira ran a hand through her (unpresentable, yah yah) hair before jabbing it at the offending sleep-pallet. "That. Waiting hand-on-foot on the Exile like she's some kind of queen or something. You aren't her servant, or her slave, Visas."
The veil glided in a graceful (what else?) half-nod. "No, I am not. Master Renani has made it quite clear that such behavior is unacceptable."
"Right. Of course. Then what is it with the free housekeeping? You're driving me nuts!"
The accused paused for a while before responding. "I am sorry to have caused you distress. I merely thought to alleviate my own over having to endure a certain... lack of harmony."
One knew there was something seriously wacky about the universe, when a Miraluka began adopting a certain persona's underhanded sarcasm. Mira might have no experience of the species beyond the now, but it was the principle of the matter! The fear factor amped up a few factors when a bounty-huntress began finding it natural... and the slightest bit amusing. A very slight bit.
Mira groaned, buried tousled head in equally tousled pillow.
A respectable while later (no pre-caffa crises in space, thankfully. Or not as often. Should've read the contract before signing up) the most petite of the crew (thank you, T3... okay, really pathetic size issues alert!) performed her daily scouting rounds.
First, rancor-trail to the... hangar, huh. Why am I not surprised.
Strive as she did to deny it, Mira was no more immune to the Exile's magnetism than the rest of the fan club. There were moments where she might (possibly) have entertained a (miniscule) regret for (minor) disparaging wannabe mother-figures early on in their acquaintanceship. She had since discovered that the overture was almost out-of-character for the shy Jedi/General... now I've seen everything. By then though, repeat was never to come, and the huntress too proud to ask.
The Jedi Master was currently holding court to a motley of components, legs folded in a torturous position that Mira was convinced required active use of Force to maintain. The Zabrak technician hovered over some more complicated-looking but no less obscure junk nearby. In the frequent instances when the Exile's attention diverted, he snuck anxious glances and rescued a trinket or two from Jedi torture.
Mira shook he head, amazed at how a woman with likely more blood on her hands than the Dark Lord herself -- at least as a former slave had "overheard" -- could morph effortlessly into child-with-blocks. The General and her Tech was a matched set, if Mira had ever seen one.
Another slap to deepen Atton's already green shade.
Speaking of the bishwag... The huntress perked her senses, certain that a dedicated Exile-stalker was somewhere close by.
Belying street-tough image, Mira never swore if she could at all control herself; it brought her too close to the unwashed masses of two-chit muggers she so detested. The Rogue/Pilot/Padawan/Fool warranted most of her recent exceptions to self-imposed rules.
Just a little... aha! Right there. Atton may be exceptional at concealing his presence, but Mira was exceptional at locating the unfound. It might have helped that there were only so many minds within the parsec torn between lust/Paza'ak/envy/lust/Paz... okay, okay! Got the idea like, what, twenty thoughts ago?
One mind, to be exact.
That guy has seriously got to get a life. Mira studied the man while he studied the dynamic duo from a "concealed" vantage. The Exile could easily have found him out, except that despite evidence of subconscious tabs on her flock (can anyone say "mother tantla"?), Mira had never heard of Jedi being as zealous about mental privacy as their "glorious leader".
Better too much respect than too little, I guess. What is it with males? A frown deepened to ache-inducing magnitude as the huntress watched the pilot watch the Exile rise to a very close vantage behind the tech's shoulder, ostensibly to peer at whatever horrors he was inflicting on... hmm, is that from all that junk she made us pick up after the droid party?.
An ugly emotion spiked, before drowning under a wave of exotic card games with even more eclectic names. And although the other (more "fortunate", hah) male remained as superficially tranquil as ever, Mira rather imagined that the Zabrak felt his General's proximity far, far deeper than he let on.
The most annoying thing about the Exile -- even more than selective slovenliness and 'fresher hogging and never pitching kitchen duty and-- uh, never mind -- was that she had not the slightest clue of how she affected the opposite sex. The younger woman had at first thought it some kind of "innocence" act, but as she got to know the other better... okay, okay, so I Peeked a little. Purely to flex newly-discovered Force muscles, of course.
Maybe it's a General thing. I suppose you get, well, jaded once you've camped with bunches of smelly men for months on end in life-or-death missions. Or maybe it's a "real Jedi" thi-- why do I care? I don't care!
Atton shifted behind the small uncomfortable space between bulkhead and machinery, enough for a sliver of light to snapshot holo-smuggler features. Consternation above and beyond the usual Atton-inspired variety geysered. Which fripping on-board genius decided to loot those farkled robes? And what does that schutta think he's doing? Going to a masque as Sith Assassin?
However, since the rogue's behavior was not overly Assassin-like (not where it counts... yet), the huntress redirected reluctant eyes to the official drama. The Exile was quite excited about something the tech had found, what from the way she murmured into his ear (betcha you are finding things just that little more "difficult", eh Bao-Dur?) and inscribed circles around where he fiddled with capacitors and transducers and whatnot that Mira had always congratulated herself for knowing zilch about. The latter (but not former) activity ended with an apparent admonishment (wow, criticizing "the General", Bao?). The Exile did the guilty youngling routine, but fairly thrummed with energy where she forced herself to stand still. The tech flicked surreptitious glances that could not quite decide between the evils of before and after.
Atton seethed. He didn't mask it very well at all, but then it wasn't as if the object of his frustrations would up and take notice anytime soon.
He probably wants her to at some level, Mira thought a tad sourly. All these months -- has it been a year already? Wow. -- and the huntress had still not figured out how the Exile did it. It isn't like she's drop-dead gorgeous or anything. Could be pretty, I suppose, if she actually took a nanocentury to do more than loop that crop of hers -- who's her barber anyway? Her lightsaber? -- out of the way. Oh, and drape on anything other than those shapeless Keeper or whatever they're called robes. Suppose she's shy about all those scars though; I would be.
But the point was that the Exile didn't bother, yet men -- and women -- behaved like mynocks around her star anyway.
A barely discernible scuffle alerted the huntress to the rewards of patience. Finally tired of self-imposed torture, Atton was employed in squeezing out using a sequence of steps Mira catalogued for future reference.
She intercepted him one corridor down, at a safe distance from Ears but close enough to state that he need not bother coming up with bluffs.
He didn't seem in the mood to, anyway. "Get lost, Mira," was snarled through distinctly clenched teeth. As if the fists weren't dead giveaways.
She honestly had no intentions of starting a fight. "Or what?" came out anyway. "Atton Rand's gonna teach me a 'lesson'? Would that be the one involving the red 'saber by any chance?"
Something passed shadow over already dark eyes -- surpassed in shade only by the Exile's jet black -- and a frisson of genuine fear descended the huntress' spine.
A sensation she was used to. A sensation she had taught herself to ignore, or at the very least mask.
It was still there though. Lurking, like Hanharr's hatred...
A hundred -- felt if not actual -- claw-rakes stung skin on back, forearm, face, thighs... suffice to say that the unblemished made for easier cataloguing. Abdomen still tender, ears still rang from a backhand powerful enough to have imprinted Humanoid form on (fortunately) soft crag-rock. Right ankle throbbed from mad dashes and wild in-run twists to fire before pursuer closed range.
But Huntress stood triumph above Prey, eyeing the pitiful, prone heap with distaste and the subsiding pull of adrenaline in veins. For all Prey's advantage in height and girth, it looked... small. An animal to be exterminated.
Prey whimpered, and Huntress was for a moment tempted to pull that last spark into wounds her own energies were insufficient to heal. But only for the moment -- she had no wish to ingest a life-force as pathetic as his.
"Who is the hunted, now?" Huntress mused, uncaring of whether Prey heard or understood.
Prey whined, a plea for death, perhaps. It did not matter, as he had no say in the outcome.
To kill, to not kill -- either way, Huntress sensed that Prey would never again have any say in any outcome of her future. It made for an interesting dilemma.
Was this her fiery, cantankerous self, who thought with such cool rationality about a creature, hardly sentient, that had been both nightmare and day-scare for years? Or was it this place, this graveyard that all spoke hushedly of yet none really knew except for She who walked where no others could go?
Huntress snapped on the safeties of her blasters, returned them to each hip. Only almost as an afterthought did she reach for the lightsaber secured a little lower to the right. Blue light cut at the sick-yellowish ambience; she contemplated its reflection upon the odoriferous mat of hair and blood.
A surgical weapon. If used instead of blasters there would have been no dripping red pools, no congealing black lumps, no overpoweringly heavy stench. Just the smell of cooked flesh.
Thoughts that would have bothered Huntress in another setting, another time.
The blade swung easily in her hand, air being no obstacle to moonbeams and wishes -- even lethal ones. Lack of melee experience had made the bastions of youth the wiser choice, even before accounting for the suicide of letting a Wookiee within his paw's reach. But, more than that, it had somehow not felt right to complete this chapter with a symbol that was to define the next.
It might, however, serve to close said chapter.
Prey whined some more. Huntress still did not care, but a rumble from a baser source did make her consider that perhaps it was time to get on with the program.
So easy either way, to depress thumb as wrist fell... or to not.
Thumb descended.
Prey moaned, but Huntress was already striding towards the gate that the planet's whimsy had shaken open, inasmuch as one could both stride and limp.
She had once claimed to Hunt with victories but no kills. Huntress had left Prey much like this once before, in the name of that unthanked compassion. But now, she sought only to dose Prey with the same twisted logic he had forced upon her for years and years and years.
Such was Huntress' first and last agreement with Prey: Death is mercy.
end interlude
Feverish eyes glared beneath unruly bangs, and for a suffocating moment Mira felt gritty unkempt fur clamped over throat to bring them eye-level... and, as a bonus, cut off a crucial element. But that was silly. Humans and Wookiees were about as distinct two species as they came, weren't they?
"None of your fedding business," Atton growled, pushing bodily by her.
Or, he tried to. Mira had not lived ten-odd years alone on Nar Shaddaa without cultivating a substantial bag of tricks. A pivot converted intended impact to mere graze of skin, a foot presented a trip for the next barge. Of course, Jedi did not trip easily, and rogues had tricks aplenty of their own, but by the time this one sidestepped she had danced back into his way.
"I'm not in a mood to play with dolls, Mira, so do yourself a favor and scram."
"Aw, but I had all my tea-things laid out!"
Hands inched -- deliberately -- towards his belt, a move somehow the more threatening for lack of follow-up rant.
What is his problem? Oh right, make that problems. "What is the matter wi--" Mira began, then decided that Jedi-hood had done nothing significant for her diplomatic skills. "You know what? Let's just skip all the 'who me', 'yeah you', because I know exactly what the matter is with you. Or should I say 'who'?"
"How smart of you, Padawan. I hope your Master pats you on the head."
The way Atton spat both words scared her in a way she had not experienced since-- for a very long time. Mira half-expected, half-hoped for the Exile to come running in a minute, but it seemed that Force (or Fate, or good-old-fashioned Bad Luck) intended her to act the big girl about this.
"Atton, you can't make a person, er, want you. Or love you. Or whatever it is you're looking for." Are physical minefields too much to ask for these days?
"Any more words of wisdom? Or can I go and chop up the next sod now?"
"Why are you doing this to yourself?" She was aware of her voice rising, but someone else had the volume controls. "Are you some kind of sadist or what?"
More shadows behind thick lashes, the stain a palpable third presence in Atton's stance, Atton's voice. "Oh yeah. Def-f-f-finitely."
Mira had actually gotten quite good at ignoring the man's overblown lechery. It wasn't all that different from the million others she'd hobnobbed with on Nar Shaddaa, or the hundreds of bounties she'd tracked before they were alerted to their status (some even after, go figure). Besides, even when targeted at the Exile, there was something... put on about that magnitude of lust.
But there was no denying the raw, almost primal, telepathic force with which he had drawled that last word... the huntress shivered. Shavit. He's playing a game, one you know very well, Mira. You will not become prey.
"Just stop it, Atton. Nothing good can come from what you're doing."
The weather on Nar Shaddaa mirrored its crowds -- wild, unpredictable. Mira had loved to climb landing pads before edges of storms, to just feel all that potential energy poised between ploughing down all in its path or shattering into harmless droplets.
She had complained about the emptiness of space. She only wished it Felt empty now.
"Atton," the huntress repeated in (futile, and you know it) hope that name could bring man back to self. "Will falling to the Dark Side make her love you?"
Shebs. That was the wrong thing to say. Situation really, really farkled... where's the fripping backup? I mean, come on, those Jedi senses have gotta be good fo--
The storm broke.
"You think I don't already know that...?" The last word dipped as sharply in volume as the first had risen. Hands trembled as they rubbed over eyes, motion completed in a sweep through spiky forelock.
Weak-kneed with relief (careful there, Mira. No swooning, or puking, or any of those dumb things they do in 'vids), she said the wisest thing to date -- nothing.
"You think I don't know?" Atton's voice remained bitter, though the presiding specter seemed to have subsided into hollowness. "I know. Oh boy, does Atton Rand know. He knows he doesn't really want to listen to that not-so-little voice that tells him that if he Falls, he won't care anymore whether she l--"
The next sentence was very soft and decrescendo. "He's not that monster. Yet."
Great. What am I supposed to say to that? And what's with the freaky third person? "You don't have to be. Ever." Perhaps she had even injected enough conviction...
That sound was not a laugh. "Yeah? So let me in on the big secret to success already, sister."
If any more shadows pass the guy, I'm gonna have to invest in weather-shields. "Just... stop obsessing over it. Go clear your head. Or something. We'll reach Telos soon anyway, and th--" and then you'll never see her again. Oh wonderful. Mira, counselor extraordinaire. Suicide/Fall rate hundred-and-twenty percent.
Her "patient" looked significantly less than impressed. "Telos. Yeah."
She would not stop him from leaving this time, but would not endure being shoved either. She stepped out of his way.
The silence of space was once more deafening.
Mira was not one for violence against inanimate objects; she left that for over-testosteroned male contemporaries. But could she help it if that bulkhead plain begged for a dent or two?
"I..."
So. She had heard after all, just omitted the "came running" part. Jedi Serenity bedamned, the Jedi "Master's" cowardice incensed her. The huntress whirled and jabbed an accusing finger the Force helped aim -- first time it had pretended usefulness since-- Can I please, please go back to bed now?
"Enjoy the show, 'Master Jedi'?"
The Exile looked at her beseechingly. "I, I thought you coul--"
"--have a buddy-session with loverboy, who by the way you messed up?"
There was petty satisfaction in hearing the eloquent, self-assured Jedi stutter.
"I thought y-you could g-get t--" Large eyes dropped to the ground. "No. I, I did think you could get through to him where I... but mostly, mostly I was just a coward. I let you fight my battle, Mira, because I have not been so afraid in, in a long time."
Neither had the huntress, but she didn't need to know that.
"I just, I just don't know what to do!" Hands compressed temples, but did not ease the tension-lines visible now that the woman had advanced to Mira's position. "I can't give him what he wants, I can't not give him what he wants..."
Maybe it was that Force Bond thing the Exile kept harping on, but whatever the cause, the huntress grabbed for righteous anger only to close around vague wisps of sympathy.
Both women stared at anything but the other for a long three minutes.
"I think you did good," the Exile ventured. After a pause came the appendix, "Considering."
Mira contorted her face in what a Gamorrean might have accepted as a grin, then eased it off with a shrug. "Men. Should've added 'gagged' and 'lobotomized' to the list."
A Case of Too Many Admirers. I really have seen everything... or will before the big three-zero at this rate.