Past Perfect

"I'm not sure I understand." She glances down at Lana, at her anxious face and the tension lines at the corners of her eyes. "Not that kind of... you did want to, correct? Finding a new fleet captain will be tedious, but if I need to go kill Koth for you-"

"What? Stars, no, that wasn't what I meant at all." Though she hasn't even moved Lana's hand reaches up, wraps around her wrist as if holding her in place. "No killing. Not Koth, at least."

"Spoilsport. But then I suppose I still don't quite follow."

With a sigh, she lets go, opening her eyes again. "If I knew how to explain, Nine, it wouldn't have been such a problem. I knew he trusted me after that, and I think that was what I'd been missing. I missed-" she gestures helplessly, her expression softening- "I missed something like this, I suppose. I wanted a friend, not a bed partner."

(She smiles at that. They are friends, when it comes down to it, not something she ever thought she'd say about a Sith Lord who used to be her boss, the outsider who was handed the gutted corpse of Imperial Intelligence and told to resurrect it as a puppet of the Council. She was used to treating Sith in the same way one would treat a serpent- kept safely at arm's length, a knife behind your back to take the head off quickly when, inevitably, the fangs came out.

Lana, to put it mildly, had been a surprise.)

"Did you tell him that?"

"Yes and no." She sits up, reaching for one of the biscuits still sitting on the forgotten tray. "The next morning I told him it wasn't going to happen again. He asked if he'd done something wrong, which was ridiculous- it was perfectly nice, honestly, but-"

Nine stops short, her own hand halfway to the plate- they may as well both eat; she's still starving- and winces. "You didn't actually use the word 'nice,' I hope."

Shrugging, Lana mumbles around a mouthful of crumbs. "I might have. What's wrong with nice?"

She oughtn't laugh- it isn't funny, except she can picture the face Koth must have made- so she shoves half a sandwich into her mouth and turns away, nominally chewing but mostly composing herself. After a moment, her expression settled back into neutrality, she rotates back to face her. "Let's put it this way. Imagine you've given me a gift, then asked me if I liked it. If I told you I thought it was nice…"

"I'd think you hated it, but you were being polite to spare my- oh." Lana pales. "Oh, hell."

"Myself, I used to default to 'lovely.' I generally save 'nice' for when I still have to be diplomatic but the sex was egregiously bad."

"I should have said something else." She flops backward, settling back onto the pillow, covering her eyes with her hands. "I should have said anything else. But it was- I don't know. It wasn't him. I-"

In that moment, she thinks she finally understands.

She leans over, smooths a stray piece of hair down over Lana's forehead. "That just isn't your kind of lonely at all, is it?"

"No. Not really." Lana rubs at the bridge of her nose, lets her hands fall to her chest with fingers interlaced. "On Korriban it was an advantage, if anything. I saw too many other acolytes die at lovers' hands to have any interest in romance, and frankly I preferred the library."

"I can imagine. I had a few bad breakups in my own school days, and unlike you we weren't being actively encouraged to kill each other."

Lana laughs, a little, at that. "Yes, well, there was that. But then, even later-" she shrugs again. "I'm really quite fond of Koth, despite his obstinacy, and in the moment I thought perhaps… but nothing. Always nothing. And I couldn't make him understand. He still thought it was him."

If there's a right way to respond to that she's not sure what it is. I'm sorry seems wrong, somehow, placating the wrong part of the problem assuming it was ever really a problem at all, which isn't for her to say. Instead, she lets the quiet settle around them, the only noises their breath and the occasional shout from the corridor beyond her closed door.

"You weren't even in the records," Lana says after a few minutes of silence. "It didn't even matter, in the end, everything we'd done on Arron Prime. You weren't in prison. We still had no idea where you were, whether you were alive or dead, and Koth started second-guessing the whole thing once he'd realized you were the woman who'd allegedly killed the Immortal Emperor."

"I wish I had. Shot him clean through the heart, not that he has one-"

(Now, now, he says inside her head, and her temples throb with pressure like a tightening vise, that's a terrible thing to say.)

She hisses- ah, that hurts; Lana tenses and sits up again, one hand on her shoulder. "Was that him? I could feel it, I think."

"Yes." She thinks of walls, solid walls made of stone and steel and wound around with thorns as long as her hand, until she feels his presence retreat from her conscious mind. "He tends to like to interject his opinion when he's the topic of conversation."

"Senya, Sana-Rae and I are still looking at possible solutions. There was a Dark Council member who might have been of help- Darth Nox was her name, and by all accounts she was a master at spirit binding, but the war took her. I haven't heard from her in years." A pause, then, a finger brushing above her upper lip. "Your nose is bleeding."

"That's the usual outcome. Beats a lightsaber through the gut, I suppose." She vaults over the back of the couch, crossing the room to the 'fresher and grabbing a clean cloth off the towel bar, presses it to her nose and pinches, hard, across the bridge. "It'll stop in a minute or two."

Lana rises, too, reaching out. "Here. May I?"

"Thought you weren't a healer." She leans in anyway, toward her outstretched hands, and a faint warmth blossoms across her face as Lana concentrates.

"I'm diversifying. Someone's got to keep the rest of you alive," she says, "and the techniques are fascinating, actually. The different applications of energy-"

Her eyes glaze over about ten seconds in; Lana could go on for ages about the Force, and it probably is really interesting stuff except that she doesn't understand a single word of it, like listening to Watcher Two discuss algorithms or Doctor Lokin break down chemical formulae. She can feel the flow of blood slowing, though, so she'll take the lecture.

"-but the Zakuulan philosophy suggests that- I'm talking too much and you're going cross-eyed. Sorry." She pulls her hands away. "That ought to do it."

"Thank you." Wadding up the cloth after wiping away a few stray drops of blood, she throws it back through the open door to the refresher. "It's a shame Koth didn't see this. It might finally convince him that the Emperor isn't what he believes."

"I doubt very much that it would be enough."

Something in Lana's voice makes her turn around; when she does, Lana's still standing on the far side of the couch, her hands clenched tight.

"We fought constantly in the weeks after Arron Prime- about you, about Arcann, about what our next steps should be, about everything except what we were actually fighting about. Vitiate, especially. Always Vitiate, Valkorion, however you want to call him. Even when we thought he was gone for good, damn him, he still ruined everything."

She comes back around beside her, rummages under the little table for the bottle she's pretty sure ended up there last night (she knows they didn't finish the whole thing, she and Theron, before their attention turned elsewhere) until her fingers close around its neck.

"That was my second mistake. I thought if I showed him," Lana looks at her, grabs the bottle from her hand, pulls the cork and takes a long sip before she can reach for a glass- she never does that, not ever- "if I showed Koth the terrible things Vitiate had done, I could make him see."

"Lana." She knows in her gut what the answer's going to be. Of all the terrible things the Emperor did there is one that they cannot forget, one place where they stood and watched a world die, but she needs to hear her say it. "Lana, what did you do?"

It's almost a laugh, but for the way it pitches upward at the end. "I took him to Ziost."

"And-"

"Have you been back to the surface? Since it happened?"

"Yes. Once. Never again."

Lana takes another long sip from the bottle, then hands it back to her. "You know, then, what it's like."

"Yes." She needs a drink, too, to wash out the memory. Thankfully, it's only half-gone. "Koth didn't take it well, I assume."

"He refused to speak to me for three days. We were halfway back to Asylum before he'd even look at me. As I said, I'm not sure he's quite forgiven me even now, and on some level… you've hear him. He still doesn't quite believe it was real."

"But he stayed. Koth's deserted once already-" Lana raises a hand to object that that, but she waves her down- "not that it wasn't warranted, but the point stands. If he hadn't believed in what you were doing, Emperor or no, he'd be gone by now."

"I suppose, but-"

Her holotransmitter, set up on the table in the far corner, starts to ring, and she turns to check the display; she hasn't got any meetings tonight, as far as she can remember, but in their ever-growing Alliance there are always a hundred fires to put out and some burn hot, even in the middle of the night.

Incoming call: Theron Shan.

Lana peeks over her shoulder at the call display. "I've taken enough of your time, Commander. I'll just-"

"Oh, sit down, would you? Unless it's an emergency he can wait- transmitter, answer call- and if you call me Commander again I will give you the longest title that I can think of and insist that every single person on this base use it in its entirety every time they so much as mention your name."

The holo flickers to life. Theron's sitting in what looks to be the pilot's chair of his shuttle, feet propped up on the instrument panel and arms folded across his chest, and to judge by the wrinkles across his forehead he's desperately trying not to laugh. "Hey, you. And Lana, I'm guessing. No one else hates titles that much."

"Hello, Theron." Sinking back into the corner of the couch, surrounded by a pile of pillows, Lana waves backward over her shoulder at the transmitter camera.

He quirks an eyebrow; she passes the bottle into her left hand, raising her right index finger to her lips, and he nods, spelling out a question. Koth?

She inclines her head to the right- later. "Hey, yourself. Is something the matter, or did you just miss me?"

"Mostly the latter." He grins. "And much as I like Tee-Seven, I can only listen to binary for so long. Nothing wrong, just a few contact updates a little too sensitive to write down. But those can wait if I'm interrupting."

"I've got the hour set aside as designated 'drink and discuss the many ways in which men are inferior' time, sorry. No boys allowed."

At that, Lana reaches across to steal the bottle back.

"Really, though," she says, "are you on your way to bed? I can ring back later, or in the morning-"

"Oh, I'll be awake." Theron stretches, arms over his head, as the astromech wheels by in the background with a cheerful chirrup of greeting. "I never sleep well shipboard. If I'm not paying attention just keep calling until I pick up."

Should've taken me with you, she signs where Lana can't see. Your fault for traveling alone.

He smirks.

"I will. Talk to you soon, then." Careful, neutral words, for others' ears. Always careful.

"Yup." The channel clicks off.

Lana chuckles. "I really should learn smugglers' cant. I always feel as though you're talking about me."

"We weren't." It's mostly not a lie, and she won't tell Theron everything in any case- some things aren't meant to be shared. "Just teasing him a bit, is all."

"It's funny, really. The first time you two met, on Manaan, I was sure you loathed each other."

"Oh, we did." She sits back down beside her, laughing. "We actually talked about that once. I believe the consensus was that he thought I was entirely amoral and completely incapable of being serious and I thought he was a humorless prude. Cute, but humorless: standard SIS field operative. They're fun to play with, until one gets bored."

With a toss of her head, Lana runs her fingers through her hair, working out the last few plaits. "It did rather remind me of a cat toying with a mouse. What happened in between, though? By Yavin he hated me for what happened on Rishi, but as you'll recall-" her cheeks flush, ever so slightly- "I know more than I care to of what happened between the two of you. You can't expect me to believe all of that was play."

"Serves you right for reading my mind. But no, it wasn't- only at first, and even then not all of it." She grins at the memory. "Honestly? I flirted with Theron because I thought it'd piss you off."

15 ATC. Manaan.

This was a stupid idea, she thinks to herself. This was a really stupid idea.

When Lana called her the last time, she should have said no. This isn't Intelligence, not anymore, where she had to jump every time some self-important Sith Lord snapped her fingers, but she hates being made a fool of and she has to admit it's looking more and more like Darok and Arkous played them all like a Void-damned orchestra. She still can't figure out why, either. She's got no idea what their end game is and it's driving her crazy.

So when Lana called, she answered, following her all the way to Manaan. Apparently they've got an ally now; she won't tell her who it is, which is both annoying and worrisome. With no name she couldn't pull a dossier before arriving. It could be anyone. It could be a Jedi.

It had better not be a Jedi.

Not that it matters now. She let Jakarro kill the scientist- all the files they need will be on the lab terminal anyway, and hopefully it'll keep the Wookiee from ripping her arms off before they can make it back to the surface- but that kept them occupied just long enough to let her quarry escape. As she watches, their submersible pulls away from the docking tube, taking off toward the surface and-

"Um, boss?" Kaliyo points toward the door they came through, now sealed shut behind them, as a half-dozen explosions rock the station and freezing water pours in through a crack in one of the viewports. "I can't swim. Thought now might be a good time to mention that."

Shit.

There must be escape pods, but she doesn't have a map of the facility either. "Lana?" She opens the channel as they run toward the far passage. "I need an exit, and you need to pull as much intel off the network here as fast as you can. They bugged out and blew the seals."

"I'm sending a shuttle down your way." A voice in her ear, definitely not Lana. Definitely male, Coruscanti accent. Not Imperial. "Keep heading down that hallway toward the cargo bay. It's about ten minutes out, but you should have time."

"This is a private channel," she says, ducking back around a corner as two of Gorima's engineered soldiers launch a volley of rifle fire in her direction. "If you're there with Lana, put her on. Otherwise, get the fuck off my line."

"She's here. But she's meditating, trying to track Darok and Arkous. I'm working on that data-" the accent's not entirely Coruscanti, now that she's heard a little more; there's a softness to the consonants, less emphasis on the hard k. Whoever he is, she'd guess he was raised elsewhere- "but I'll try to talk you through at the same time."

The water here's already up to her ankles, freezing cold even through boots and thick socks, and as they run she catches a whiff of wet fur as Jakarro charges past her into the next room. "You must be the mysterious ally, then. Do you have a name, mysterious ally?"

"We'll do names topside. Too many potential ears."

"We do know how to secure a channel, you know."

He snorts. "Maybe, maybe not. Once you cross this room there's one more hallway before the cargo bay. I'll- um. Hang on. There's something-" the channel cuts out for a second.

Kaliyo looks at her. "That doesn't sound good."

She hands her an extra stim, an extra kolto syringe, and her last two grenades. "Let the Wookiee take point. If it gets that bad, run for the docking tube."

Before Kaliyo answers, Mysterious Ally's in her ear again. "Gorima had a pet project- a cyborg prototype. Shielded. It's loose in the cargo bay."

"Can we bypass? Dock the shuttle somewhere else."

"There isn't anywhere else."

She sighs, ducking as a dead Selkath goes flying overhead. "I'm not equipped for cyborgs. I was expecting a Sith and a meat shield."

"Oh, come on," he says, "Lana said you were tough."

(now that is disappointing, hunter says.

she's curled up on the floor of the nar shaddaa safehouse, hunter called her back after hoth- she thought it was just to get her away from temple, to threaten her again, but that wasn't it. she doesn't know what was in the syringe; it could have been glitterstim or etching acid and she would have had to stick it in her arm anyway when hunter told her to. her nerve endings burn and it hurts it hurts it hurts and-

one finger up the back of her neck. it feels like her skin's splitting. i thought you were tough.)

"You-" the doors to Cargo slide open and it's standing in the center of the room, easily ten feet tall and studded with metal where it isn't armored which is almost everywhere; that is the biggest Selkath she's ever seen- "have no fucking idea."

Five minutes until compression failure. The synthesized voice rings through the overhead speakers. Five minutes until compression failure. Please proceed to the nearest escape pod for immediate evacuation.

She kills the creature in three.

The decontamination jets helped, to be fair, but dead's dead and dead and on fire's better. She lets Kaliyo patch up Jakarro as she activates the console beside the docking chamber. "Alright, Mysterious. Where's my shuttle?"

"Docking now. Hold on."

The projector activates, and- oh. He's cute.

"Well. Hello, 'pub." Not a Jedi, but there's no mistaking it, looking at him- dark hair and eyes, tanned skin above a leather jacket that definitely isn't standard-issue and cranial implants that definitely are - SIS. She'd bet good credits he's SIS. She licks her lips. "Now I see why Lana's been keeping you all to herself."

He rolls his eyes. "Yeah. I'm with the Republic. I'm also saving you. Is that going to be a problem?"

"Oh, no. I can play nice."

"Good. Door should be opening-" as he says it, the seals hiss and the panels slide open, revealing a little shuttle beyond- "now."

"Looks cozy." She signals, waving her team onward. "And here I was just thinking it's been a while since I've gotten to ride anything Republic-issue."

Oh, he's a blusher. This is going to be delightful. "Oh, for-"

She hangs up on him. Time to go.

(Was that really what you said? Lana buries her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking with laughter. He did look flustered when I came out of meditation.

She tries, unsuccessfully, to look innocent.)

By the time they get back to the meeting room she's gotten the water out of her boots and most of the blood off her face, and rearranged her hair to cover the scorched bits.

"Everyone, this is Jakarro, our new friend and import/export specialist, and his colleague C2-D4, formerly of Onderon. Jakarro, Cee-Two, this is Lana Beniko-" Lana, polite, nods her head- "and Mysterious Ally who won't tell me his name except in person."

He's got his nose buried in a datapad, but at least he looks up when she speaks. "Theron Shan, Republic SIS. Hi."

She knew it . "Hello, Theron Shan. Lana, have you introduced me?"

"I thought I'd let you do the honors."

"I see." She turns toward him with a mocking little bow as he looks her up and down, tracks his eyes as they flick toward her weapons, her armor, lingering on her face. "Cipher Nine, formerly of Imperial Intelligence. I do hope my reputation precedes me."

To his credit, he only goes a little pale. Good. "I hear Imperial Intelligence isn't much to speak of these days."

"We got tired of winning all the time, so we figured we'd let you see what it feels like for once." She shrugs, her smile wide. "It was getting boring, really."

"And we will all," Lana sighs irritably, "be working together for the near future, so if you would please keep the sniping to a minimum-"

"Oh, you're no fun." She winks at him. "We're only playing, aren't we, Theron?"

He looks back down at his datapad as Lana, eyes narrowed, mouths a single word in her direction- Behave.

(I seem to recall hearing that a lot, that year, she says.

Well, you did deserve it.

She curls into the cushions as Lana ruffles her hair. I suppose I did.)