THROWDOWN

With sibling war about to break out, the droids are about to become the least of the rebels' problems. -LS

...

For the first thirty seconds, everything is fine.

For the first thirty seconds Ahsoka and Steela manage the situation. They act as liaisons between the siblings: Steela stands in front of Dalla and talks to her while Ahsoka speaks with Thias.

They speak among themselves too: they decide that since Marlon's sent Thias south, now would be a good time to contact House Blackwell about a public alliance and northern reinforcements.

For the first thirty seconds, Steela looks more excited than a child on their Life Day. But really anyone would be if their present was the northern fleet.

On the thirty-first second, Thias says "Um, actually" and explains the circumstances of his trip to Iziz.

As soon as that sinks in, Dalla bellows "You ran away from home?"

And then it all goes to hell.

…

"Quit yelling at me! It's not like you did any different!" Thias yells.

Dalla almost loses her mind. "Yes, I did! Father told me to leave, whereas you just took off without anyone knowing."

"Nobody but Father knew about you!"

"Father's the important one! He probably thinks you've been kidnapped. What if he sends the navy, Thias? It's too early to do that! Rash will -."

"He's too smart to send the navy now."

"For us? He'd do anything!" Dalla knows that better than she knows her own name. "Thias, what were you thinking?!"

"What were you thinking stealing my comm numbers?" He stands up on the couch but Lux scoops him up around the waist and puts him on the ground. "You could have just told me where you were going but nooo…"

"Don't try to pin this on me!" She looks to Lux and Ahsoka for support but both of them look supremely confused. She and Thias lapsed into Onderonian when their argument really got going, and they're still going strong in the old language. Looks like Lux never learned and there was no way poor Ahsoka could know what they were saying.

Saw and Steela are rapt. This must be straight out of the pages of their own sibling arguments.

"If you'd just told me where you were going -"

"Then there would have been an unnecessary leak. It was to protect you in case Rash came after you."

"Well nobody knows where I am, so we're just as safe. Father probably thinks I'm just in my room or out sport fishing."

Dalla resists the urge to pull her hair. "Not for three days during a civil war, Thias!" She realizes something. "What banners did you fly on the way down?"

"What do you mean what banners did I fly? Ours of course."

She counts to ten to keep from screaming.

"You mean to tell me you flew Blackwell banners out of Blackhold, to the mouth of the river, all the way down and into the harbor?"

"I took them off before I got to the harbor, Dal. I'm not stupid."

"Thias! Probe droids! They're everywhere; I was wearing Aunt Shara's old southern stuff so they wouldn't notice me and I flew Flint colors and I still got stopped at the marina. I don't even want to think about how many droids and people saw those banners."

"Well sorry for not having a Flint banner on hand!"

"Sweet drexls, shut up!" Steela roars in Onderonian and steps between them. "Both of you!"

Both Thias and Dalla startle at the outburst.

"Count Dooku could probably hear you two on Serenno!" she hisses.

Dalla takes a deep breath to calm down. "Okay, I'm sorry. I lost it."

"Oh yeah you did," Steela confirms. "You just gave Saw a run for his money."

"I resent that," Saw grumbles.

"The damage is done. All we can do is work with the cards we have now." She nods to Thias. "If you two can speak to each other without yelling, I think some introductions are in order."

"I already know Saw," Thias pouts.

Dalla ignores the comment. "Thias, meet everyone. The guy who brought you in is Saw. Standing next to him is Lux Bonteri, our bannerman. Steela Gerrera is the leader and our best spokeswoman, and Ahsoka's here as an advisor. Everyone, this is my brother Thias."

Lux sticks out his hand to greet Thias formally. "It's good to finally meet you, Thias."

"You too," Her brother's usual self-assured personality returns a little at the familiar courtesy. "Thanks for trying to stop the maelstrom, even if it didn't work."

"Hey, I came up with the ideas," Saw interrupts. "If we'd had time before we got busted, you'd be in the catacombs now."

"Thank gods they didn't," Steela mutters under her breath. Dalla's inclined to agree. Better they caught Thias the first day he was in the city, rather than after a few days of sneaking around under her nose. "Kid, I hate to ask because I'm sure you're tired of explaining, but why are you down here?"

Thias glowers at Dalla. "I'm here because four days ago, Father got a delivery from Iziz. It's the betrothal contract, and it has his signature on it. So right now you and Sanjay Rash are engaged. Mazel tov."

Dalla's jaw drops "What? Father signed it?

"No! It's a signature and it's definitely Father's. But he says it looks old. Like really old."

She catches on. "Like Aunt-Shara's-divorce-papers old?"

"Aye, that old."

If Dalla had a pillow right now she would scream the most vile curses Basic and Onderonian have to offer into it. Steela grabs her arm to keep her from doing it anyway. She takes a deep breath to tamper down her rage before it bubbles over. She had Rash for a lot of things, but forger wasn't one of them until now.

"Do we have a place for him here?" she asks Steela, crossing her fingers. She could put Thias up in an inn or in Saw's place in the catacombs, but considering their proximity to Rash and the way her brother thinks, she wants to keep him close.

"As long as you're good with him staying in the guys' dormitory. We can probably find a blanket or something."

"I don't need a blanket," Thias says and holds out his shirt collar to cool down.

"You need clothes," Dalla realizes. Thias is still wearing the bottoms from his leathers and a heavy wool shirt. It's a miracle the droids or heat stroke didn't sideline him before now. "We don't have any in your size either."

Steela rolls her eyes. "Do I even need to tell you who can find some?"

She doesn't. "On second thought, he can take the shirt I have now and I can wear Aunt Shara's fruit shirt."

Dono stands up from a group of rebels hunkered down near the wall previously eavesdropping on the Blackwells' argument. "Tell me I didn't just hear fruit shirt."

Dalla nods gravely. "You did. If we don't get clothes for Thias here, I'll have to go back to wearing it. This shirt's gender-neutral, right?" She gestures to her/Dono's shirt, and then to Thias.

"No chance!" Dono shrieks and grabs her helmet. "Kid, what size are you? Oh nevermind, just come with me to be sure that whatever we grab fits. Steela, don't let anyone put the fruit shirt on!"

…

Dalla wanted to go with Thias and Dono, but Steela vetoed that immediately. ("Little northern boy in fishing leathers along with a girl with her head wrapped in a scarf," she scoffed. "Yeah, that's not obvious at all.") Next she tried to tell Thias to write down anything Dono spent so they could reimburse her after the war, when walking into a bank wouldn't be like waving a giant flag and screaming "Here I am!" But Dono explained that away too: they weren't going to actually buy anything. They were going shopping from donation bins.

"Technically it's stealing from the companies, but it's sort of an emergency," Dono shrugged. "Anyway most of them turn some kind of profit on it. They won't miss one set of clothes."

She does manage to convince Saw to go along with them, just to make her and Thias feel better. If she can't go then Saw's the next best thing for Thias' peace of mind, and she trusts him to keep her brother safe.

While the three of them are gone Steela goes back to the briefing room supposedly to go over strike locations, but Dalla suspects it's really for some peace and quiet after the maelstrom. Ahsoka claims she needs to comm her masters and claims the kitchen as her base of operations. Dalla heads for the storeroom to find Thias a blanket or count blaster cartridges or ration packs or do anything to keep her twitching hands busy.

Lux goes with her. Looks like he needs to do something to keep from going insane too.

"So that happened," he says.

"I honestly have no idea how he made it through the gates," she admits. "It could have gone wrong so many ways, but it didn't."

"I think we'd call that the will of the force," he smiles halfway, but he's still on edge. "And sometimes it takes insanity to win the day. Take you on the comm with the Bralykburns."

"Steela did all the work on that."

"Oh, she did. She's brilliant. But you still showed your hand. You let them know you were here."

"It was a long shot," she admits. "We had to trust that Steela's intimidation and the threat of my father's wrath work once they realized I heard everything."

"But it was still practically suicide if they were fully allied with Rash," He admonishes. "And I know you know that now and you knew it then."

"It was stupid."

"It was," he agrees. "I thought you'd lost your mind until I thought about it a while. And then I realized what you did."

Uh oh. "I wasn't doing anything. I just got angry and lost my senses."

Lux shuts the door behind them. "Dalla, I'm a lordling too. I know when people are playing the game and I know when they're lying. You're doing both right now."

"You think I'm going to tell you what I'm doing?" she whispers. "I'm trying to keep myself and Thias as far away from Sanjay Rash as physically possible. That's all I'm doing."

"In that I have no doubt. We're in the same room I told you about me and my...inheritance," he swallows, still uncomfortable with the thought of being heir to the throne. "I trusted you enough to tell you that, you trusted me enough to invoke the banner oath getting here, now all I'm asking is for you to level with me. It's not even that hard to figure out once you think about it and the situation. The Lady of House Gerrera. You could have said Steela was the rebellion's leader, or just ordered him to apologize on the grounds of courtesy. But you went with the Lady of House Gerrera."

Kriff. He figured that one out.

"That wasn't just an intimidation tactic," he says. "You knew. You knew the Bralykburns are going to look into it and they aren't going to find anything. Which means if they dispute the title it's their word against yours, mine, and Bremon Kira's. And he won't deny it. Which means that when the Bralykburns start talking, they'll have essentially minted a new House. A small House, yes, but a House all the same."

"Lux, has anyone ever said you'd be a great detective if you got tired of being a Senator?"

"Oh, I'm not finished. Because if I'm right, this is just the warm-up round. Our brand new House has two members, a man and a woman, both of whom are unmarried and have no bannermen to please, no old enemies to appease, and everything to gain from making a few alliances. I don't think it's a coincidence there happen to be two eligible matches right here in this room. Wouldn't that solve your problem right away?"

Dalla mentally kicks herself. Of course she should have remembered Lux was a lordling too. He thinks the same way, in families and alliances and bloodlines and above all, house politics.

"It wouldn't do for a lord or lady to marry a Beast Rider, but the members of a new house who happen to be heroes of the rebellion? That's more than a suitable match."

Salt gods damn it. He's figured out everything. "Well, looks like great minds think alike."

"I don't understand why you didn't just tell me. I'm not going to try and stop you, though I'm not sure about you and Saw…"

"I didn't want you to think I was trying to push you to do the same. Because if you wanted to go down that path with Steela, a Lady's a suitable match for you. She's a better leader than a lot of Lords."

"That she is," Lux smiles a little. "Ahsoka too. You haven't seen her in action before, and let me tell you it's a sight to behold." His little smile grows and turns wistful, apparently remembering that sight.

"You love them both," she realizes.

"What?"

"Lux, I'm not blind. You're making eyes at both of them. Steela's nothing if not obvious, and I thought Ahsoka was going to take my head off when you and I talked here last time."

"That might have had something to do with what I told her about you before you arrived."

"What could you have said, 'Dalla is a succubus?'" She laughs. "We hadn't even met!"

Lux leans against the wall, grinning. "Oh, we were supposed to. When we were thirteen, my parents were on Onderon to petition Dendup to join the Separatist cause. And as a side trip, they told me they were going to stop at Blackhold to discuss a marriage alliance between our houses."

The shipwreck blurs most of her thirteenth year like an enormous ink blot, but she does remember her parents arguing before they left on that fateful voyage. "My parents were too, at least my mother was. She and Father were arguing a lot, behind closed doors of course so we didn't hear. I do remember hearing your family name but I always thought it had something to do with the banner oath. We went on that voyage so my parents could have a talk with me but the storm blew in before we got the chance and my father never brought it up after."

"There were never any formal talks," Lux says. "We knew a betrothal was the last thing your family wanted to talk about after that awful wreck. But my parents did like you and your family and they said we'd try again later. But every time we thought to approach your father, something came up."

"Considering my current prospects you wouldn't have been a bad match." She laughs. "So what did you think about it?"

"I was a thirteen-year-old boy. Obviously the first thing I did was search your name on the HoloNet to see if you were pretty."

"And were you happy with what you saw?"

"The first result I got was a painting of a twenty-five-year-old supermodel looking woman so yes, I was pretty happy. Do you realize how many Dalla Blackwells there have been?"

"A lot. 'Dalla' is the most common northern girls' name. Do you know what happened when I searched your name a few months ago to check on the banner oath?"

Lux winces. "Don't remind me."

She wouldn't want to be reminded of breaking up a peace conference and having to be saved by a Jedi either. "Too bad the betrothal never worked out. Then none of this would have happened."

"It wouldn't have taken," he winks. "I've been betrothed since Carlaac."

"Whoever she is she's a lucky lady." She has a sneaking suspicion she knows who this lucky lady is from the news reports.

He changes the subject. "When are you going to ask Saw?"

"Tomorrow. I don't have any idea what I'm going to say." She leans on the wall beside him when she gets an idea. "What about this? You give me some tips on how to do this, and I'll set you up with your mysterious betrothed for a date. Deal?"

"As long as it's not a rowboat date, we've got a deal."

…

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