(Prompt request: 99. "I don't care what they said, it doesn't mean shit!" - Nine/Theron.

Theron POV.)

that'll leave a mark

Twenty-two hours of radio silence. Twenty-one hours since anyone's heard from Nine.

No news is good news when it comes to reports from the strike team, but she should have been back hours ago. At first he figures she just came back to base without telling him. Force knows he wouldn't expect her to- she always came and went as she pleased, her private time carefully guarded except when she chose to share it with him, let alone now when they're barely speaking outside their scheduled meetings. But she hasn't even commed Lana and no one's seen her since she wandered out into the woods.

Something's wrong. Something's definitely wrong.

He paces circles around the holotable, one way and then the other and then around again, until he almost trips over Lana's chair, half a meter back from where it was during his last lap-

"Theron."

He stops. Lana looks up at him, arms folded, and shakes her head gently.

"Go get some sleep. You look awful, and you're wearing a groove in the floor."

"We should be looking for her," he says in reply. "She should be back by now. If she's hurt- if he hurt her-"

"She'll be back any moment, I'm sure." Her face is less certain than her voice. "She knows the timeline for the raid. But if we still haven't had word by dawn, we'll have the scouts start looking."

He frowns. "Something's wrong, Lana. I know it."

He'd thought saying it out loud might make him feel better, that hearing it would make him realize how ridiculous he was being. But the knot in his chest just tightens all the more and he rubs his eyes and sighs until she reaches out to rest her hand along his forearm.

He waits for the press of her mind on his, trying to slip beneath some unguarded edge to pry at the thoughts beneath- he'd heard Nine scream at her all the way down the hallway, even as he was walking away himself, and he's not sure even now that Lana understood any of it.

(He understands why she did it now.

But it might be too late for that.)

The intrusion never comes, though. "If you're not going to sleep," Lana says instead, "we could use some more caf. Can you bring some up from the mess?"

Theron nods. "Yeah. Sure."

He walks out of the War Room and across the complex, takes the turbolift down to the mess level and he's almost to the mess hall door when he hears something that makes him stop and turn around.

"-I'm telling you, I heard it from one of the strike team and he heard 'em all arguing the other week before the raid. But it's not like anyone should be surprised. Commander used to be a Cipher. They do half their work on their backs." The taller of the two soldiers snorts, leaning back against the corridor wall. "Too bad that Arcann's half-machine. He had a few more human bits left, we could just strip her down and throw her at him and the war'd be over in about five minutes. Like we used to do with Lorant, right?"

He takes a deep breath in, staring flatly at the soldier- one of their newer recruits, a massive ex-Imperial Major named Pierce; Nine never liked him and had said as much but they needed combat squad leaders badly- until the man looks over to him with a raised eyebrow.

"You got a problem?"

"If you keep running off your mouth like that-" Theron takes a few steps closer to the duo. Fuck, this guy's a head taller than him and easily twice his weight, what's he doing- "I might. Do you always talk about your superiors like that?"

"Only when I hear a story this good." Pierce cracks his knuckles loudly before turning back to his companion. "Anyway, they said we only got the staging point because-"

Something in him snaps, then. "I don't care what they said, it doesn't mean shit. That's enough."

"Wait. Shan, right? You were there, so let's hear it. Alderaan. Did she, or did she not-"

He never does find out what exactly the question was going to be, though he's pretty sure he knows. Hard to keep asking questions with a fist in your teeth- his first punch shuts Pierce up pretty quickly.

(He was wrong on one front, though.

This guy's more like three times his weight and he hits like a wampa. This is going to leave a mark.)