Ghosts

She lets him stay.

She doesn't know why- it breaks half the unspoken rules they've set for themselves- but later that night, at the moment when they've caught their breath and their heartbeats slow to normal pace, when normally whoever doesn't belong to the place they are would get up and dress and go, she reaches out for Theron's hand as he stands up from the bed.

"If you don't want to," she says, "you don't have to leave."

He stops, turning back toward her as her fingers loop around his wrist. "You know I can't say no to you, but it's late and I leave for Coruscant at six. I need to sleep."

"I still don't understand why you have to meet in person. If you get caught-"

"I won't get caught."

"You'd better not." She's been worried about it ever since he first proposed the trip, especially since he's been strangely vague about the entire thing- support for the Alderaan shield generator mission, he said, which doesn't make sense at all. He wouldn't say more, even when she pressed, which wasn't like him. "That wasn't what I meant, though. Just…" She looks up at him. "If you'd rather not brave the corridor there's a perfectly serviceable bed here. For sleeping in."

He doesn't move. In the half-light of her quarters- she isn't shy, but industrial-grade lighting isn't flattering to anyone- his face is hidden in shadow; she can't read his expression. Letting go of him, she rolls from her stomach to her side and pushes the pillow, marred with lipstick smudges in the precise shape of his name (they still have to be quiet here and, spurred to inventiveness by the game and the conversation that followed, tonight he'd made that very difficult indeed) away from her toward the headboard.

"But if you'd rather-"

Theron sits back down, nudging her toward the center of the bed with the pressure of his weight against hers. "Better move over, then. I thought you preferred the left side."

She curls around him, ringing the narrow of his waist with her own body, as he reaches for the top edge of the blanket. "I do, usually, but I can't sleep on my left at the moment. Still a bit tender."

"I keep forgetting about that, sorry." Bedclothes half drawn back, he stops for a moment, his hand traces the writing on her side; the callus of his trigger finger catching lightly on her healing skin. "It suits you. Didn't know Ciphers went in for tattoos."

"We don't- not permanent ones, at any rate. Too easy an identifier. I would have gotten hauled in for this, once upon a time."

"Such a rebel."

At that, she shoots him a look of mock horror; he grins.

"Too far?"

She smirks, uncoiling, and stretches. "Let me up, hm? I need the 'fresher before I pass out. Shall I leave you out a toothbrush?"

(Force help her, she really has gone domesticated.)

He chuckles. "You've got an extra?"

"The one I like only comes in sets of two."

She doesn't dream that night, but when she wakes he's-

No, not gone. She can hear him breathing, a steady rhythm in the darkness, but she's alone in the bed and his pillow's gone cool. Sitting up, she scans the room as her eyes adjust.

Already dressed but for his jacket, Theron's sitting cross-legged at the head of the stairs down to the work area; his hands rest, palms up, on his knees. His shoulders rise and fall in time with the sound of his breath. He's-

He's meditating.

She's worked with enough Sith to know better than to disturb him, Force-sensitive or not. Instead she gathers the bedclothes around her body, hugs her knees to her chest and simply watches. After a while her own breathing starts to synchronize with his- in and out, in and out, a hitch after inhalation like timing a shot through a scope, relaxing in its familiarity. Minutes pass.

It's well past five by the time he moves. His fingers curl, first, inward toward his palms before he straightens, stretching his arms overhead with an audible yawn.

"I could never get the hang of that. Always ended up falling asleep."

"I did, too, at first. It's easier to learn when you're young." Theron looks back over his shoulder, a smile ghosting at the corners of his mouth. "How long have you been awake?"

"Twenty minutes, maybe- not such a long time. I didn't want to break your concentration." She shrugs, wrapping the blanket tighter. "I thought meditation was a Force thing."

For a fleeting moment, he's somewhere far away. "It usually is. But when you do something every day for over a decade, it gets to be a habit." Bracing himself with one hand on the floor, he pushes himself to his feet. "One of the things Master Zho insisted on- no breakfast until after cleaning and meditation were done. I gave up the fasting a long time ago, but some of it stuck. Helps clear my mind."

"You've mentioned Master Zho before. He raised you?"

"He delivered me." Theron keeps moving down the stairs, toward his belt (hanging, properly, next to the weapon rack) and his jacket (hanging, improperly, off her desk lamp). "He trained me as a Jedi. When he realized that would never happen, I don't think he knew what to do. It- I'll tell you the story sometime."

She nods, watching him dress. "How old were you?"

"Thirteen."

What would he have looked like at thirteen? Too thin, she'd bet, like the Jedi children they rounded up on Tython, all arms and legs in shapeless tunics and oversized robes. Wide dark eyes and sharp cheekbones, hair long- or clipped short, except for that silly little braid-

She smiles, despite herself, at the mental image, though she suppresses it quickly as he turns to face her again. To judge by his tone of voice, it isn't a happy story; then again, most people in their line of work don't have happy stories. People with happy stories, happy families- they don't go for jobs where the average life expectancy's on the near side of thirty.

"I'm sorry. That-"

His chrono alarm sounds; he silences it with a sigh. "Five thirty. Hold that thought until I get back, okay?"

"Be careful, Theron. I'm serious."

"I'm always careful. But if that's an order-" he bounds up the stairs, two at a time, and onto the edge of the bed, leans forward until his hands tangle in her hair as he kisses her- "I'll be extra careful."

With a few words and a touch she could drag him down, pull him into her arms and keep him there until the shuttle's long gone; it would be a simple thing but it would be selfish, too, and the war comes first. It has to.

So she kisses him back, and then she watches him go.

She can smell ozone, sharp and clean, halfway down the corridor, and when she gets to the training room she nearly collides into an anxious-looking Republic scout and two apprentices all moving rapidly backward through the doorway. As she angles to pass them, a forked bolt of lightning crackles across the length of the room; she can hear the shield around one of the training dummies give way with a sharp pop, and the odor of charring duraplast mingles with the ozone as she inhales.

"I- ah, Commander, you might not-" The scout, a dark-skinned Zabrak girl with pale gray markings, reaches for her arm. "You might want to come back later, ma'am."

"I'll risk it."

"Your funeral, ma'am."

She waves them off, and the three disappear down the hall. Peering through the door, she yells in the direction of where the arc's trajectory suggests Lana ought to be. "I'm coming in, Lana, and if you shock me to death I'm leaving Theron in charge of the Alliance."

"Good." The lightning stops abruptly, replaced by the low purr of an igniting saber. "I always hated titles, anyway."

She steps further into the training hall. Normally crowded by this time of morning, the room's entirely empty today save one very aggravated-looking Sith Lord, currently wielding a lightsaber against a trio of orb-shaped remotes. Across the way, one of the dummies smokes ominously.

"Did you want something, Commander, or are you here to gloat?" Lana's still got her back to the center of the room, deflecting bolts back at the floating drones with each change in her blade's angle. Her shoulders are tense, though, and her bladework uncharacteristically sloppy.

This isn't anger. She's seen her angry often enough to know the flavor of her rage- keen and cool, an ice-rimed blade honed razor-sharp. This is-

This is what she'd seen during the Gravestone's maiden flight: Lana, disarmed by Arcann's knights, wounded, retreating to a corner of the ship to throw lightning at something until it burst into flame or she collapsed into exhaustion- anything to drive the taste of failure from her mouth. She isn't angry, she's brooding.

Well, then. Past time to snap her out of it.

"Oh, stuff it, Beniko. Gloat about what? I just wanted a little practice on the wall before breakfast." Crossing the room to the base of the exposed rock wall and pulling on her climbing gloves, she launches herself at the first ledge and starts to pull herself upward. "You know I couldn't care less who you fuck."

Shots fired.

The second outcropping is too high to jump to; she digs her fingertips into a crack in the rock and braces her right foot on a half-buried stone, listening for the tinny chirps of the remotes or, if she's misjudged her mood, the sound of her own hair lit on fire by electricity. The next volley from the drones goes flying back- she can hear the impacts as she continues to climb, one handhold after the next- but when she turns to look over her shoulder Lana's hooking her lightsaber onto her belt.

Target down.

"You certainly have a knack for vulgarity." She's been here for a while, clearly, face flushed and hair damp with sweat, her practice robe sticking to her back. "But it would serve me right. All my nattering on about objectivity and not letting one's personal feelings interfere with the mission and there I go, stomping off like a sullen child. He ought to have kept his damned mouth shut."

"I'm missing something, Lana. Force knows I'm in no place to judge- ow-" she misses a foothold and her knee skids into the wall before she hauls herself onto the topmost ledge- "and it's not as though anyone would think less of you- besides Senya, maybe, but given her romantic history she certainly doesn't have the high ground there. What-"

Lana folds her arms across her chest, staring up at her peevishly. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Suit yourself. You've been working together all this time and haven't killed each other yet. Assuming you can keep that up, it's business as usual."

"I will manage, as always, but by my calculations the gossip mill will reach critical mass at eleven o'clock this morning." Lana's pacing, now, at the base of the wall, seven steps back and forth, still looking upward. "It's likely to be a distraction."

"No, it won't." The hanging rope's three meters to her right, an easy jump; she walks to the far end of the ledge and turns, takes a few running steps and leaps from the edge.

Lana sighs. "I wish you'd wear a harness like a normal person. And you can't possibly know that. Between Tora and Kaliyo-"

As the rope stops swaying she winds it around her calf and inverts herself, letting the blood rush to her head. "Kaliyo's not a gossip, believe it or not- she's a provocateur, but she'd rather bank her secrets and cash them out later. I doubt Tora will be talking, either. Koth threatened to throw all her tools into the garbage compactor."

"He did what? When?"

"After you left." She gestures, upside down, toward the door. "I was lip-reading, technically speaking, so I'm going by context, but I think you're safe. Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to do those calculations?"

"That's-"

She curls upward into a pike, grabs the rope again and untwists it from her leg before she releases, drops half the distance to the floor and catches hold again. The stretch on her side makes her wince as Lana reaches out; the air ripples and she feels her body start to float upward against the pull of gravity. "Let go. I'm not going to fall."

"You have no sense of self-preservation, do you?" As she says it, though, Lana lowers her hands. "How long… hm. What time is it?"

"Quarter to seven or thereabouts."

"About six hours."

She slides the rest of the way to the ground. "Before or after you slept?"

Lana shrugs.

"You've got- what, just the quartermasters' meeting today? I'll take that over. You-" before the Sith can duck away she grabs her by the shoulders and turns her abruptly toward the exit- "are going to bed."

"You've already got three other meetings. You can send Theron to talk to the quartermasters."

"He left for Coruscant forty-five minutes ago, so no, I can't. I will see you at dinner, and if I hear you've been out of quarters before then I will hide in the rafters and shoot sleep darts at you until you've got more shit sticking out of your head than an Alderaanian courtier." She keeps moving forward until, with one last shove, they're both back in the corridor. "Now go."

Lana, surprisingly, does.

For her part, she shoves her gloves into her back pocket and takes the lift up to the mess hall. Today'll be a five-cup sort of day, she thinks. At least.

The rest of the day passes in meetings and a stack of ops reports that badly need filing- she only needs three cups of caf, as it turns out, the near-fistfight between Hylo and Doctor Oggurobb over who'd get the last of the prototype shielding being more than enough to keep her awake for the remainder of the afternoon. (For his size, the Hutt is surprisingly spry.) By evening the reports are nearly done and she's singing along with a cheerful Twi'leki pop song as the last few upload when, over the music, she hears a soft knock at the door.

"Door's open."

"I thought we were having dinner." Lana steps across the threshold, a plastic mess tray balanced in her hands. "I waited for you."

She's only been working on reports for two hours, maximum. It can't possibly be that late- and yet, somehow, her terminal insists it's 2030. "I'm sorry. I lost track of time, I suppose, though that's no excuse. How was dinner?"

"Gorak. Again. I swear they must have run into a flock and are trying to pass it off as rations." Her nose wrinkled at the memory, Lana holds the tray out toward her. "I brought sandwiches. And biscuits."

"Better than supplement bars by a long shot. Did you sleep?" She pushes the terminal screen away, studying her in its reflection; she looks better, eyes clear and hair brushed, her robes neat and unwrinkled. "We're short-handed this week as it is without you coming apart on me."

"I know. I slept, I promise."

She takes the tray, sets it on the table in front of the couch as she clears her empty cups away, and gestures. "Good. Come on, then. Sit. Talk."

When Lana starts to protest she picks up a piece of biscuit and, just as she reaches peak volume, pops it between the other woman's parted lips.

"You'll feel better. Trust me, nothing good ever came from pining over men."

"I am not," Lana says, crunching by way of punctuation, "pining. Nothing to pine over."

She takes a bite of sandwich- some indeterminate kind of cheese, but still better than gorak for the fifth day in a row- and sits, cross-legged, on the couch. "I haven't seen you that upset since Ziost. Even when Arcann skewered me it just pissed you off, but Koth's got you rattled. Why?"

"I made a mistake with Koth, and then I made a second mistake trying to fix the first. I still don't know that he's quite forgiven me for the second."

"After the look he gave you last night, I'm fairly sure that isn't true. I've seen that look a thousand times- you could snap your fingers and have him back."

Lana settles down beside her, pulling a pillow onto her lap and clutching at it until her knuckles blanch. "What if that isn't what I want?"

"I'm fairly sure he knows that too, Lana. So it didn't work out… that sort of thing happens, I hear." She sets the sandwich back on the plate- she's starving, honestly, now that she's paying attention to her stomach, but it seems impolite- and turns toward her. "Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?"

"I- oh, damn it all. You don't mind, do you?"

"Not in the least."

She clutches the pillow tighter. "It happened on Arron Prime. But it started on Asylum."

"You have to understand," Lana says, looking up at her, "I'd been trying to make inroads on Zakuul for the better part of a year, completely alone. Koth was doing the opposite, of course- he'd deserted after Denon, as I think he told you- but he had leads I couldn't have found on my own."

Her fingers keep busy as she listens, weaving and unweaving little plaits into Lana's hair. "He did tell me, yes. Keep going."

"There was a record archive on Arron Prime, which seemed safer than trying to hit Zakuul directly. We got the information we needed, but we took mortar fire on the way out. Crashed the shuttle. After that, we were running from skytroopers for six weeks straight." She sighs. "Not quite as bad as after Manaan, but it came close."

"But you escaped."

"We caught a Knight on solo patrol. I hid the body, Koth took his armor and stole a ship. It was an ancient cargo transport, but after almost a month of foxholes it was practically a yacht."

Lana shifts restlessly onto her side; she adjusts the pillow in her lap, shifting it down a little to cushion between her thigh and Lana's shoulder. "And that's when-"

She nods, silent for a moment, before she continues. "I was so wretchedly lonely, Nine."

"You don't have to justify yourself. You'd been running solo for a long time- that wasn't meant to be a double entendre, sorry- and Force knows adrenaline does interesting things to people."

"Something you and Theron know nothing about, I'm quite sure."

"Guilty as charged, but you're changing the subject." Separating out another few strands of blonde hair, she winds them between her fingers. "So you were lovers, but you said you made a mistake. What was it?"

Lana closes her eyes. "That was the first mistake. I wasn't that kind of lonely."