Star Wars Fan Fiction

In The Blazing Heat

By Kraven Ergeist

Chapter Four

"I'm sorry, Talia…"

Kellen and Talia were walking away from the cantina where they had once worked. It had been Kellen's fault, really. He shouldn't have been so protective of Talia. Half the reason – no, really, the whole reason they had even had the job was because of her sex appeal. So, of course he should have expected the customers to ogle over her, compliment her, inquire about her, and give her gratuitous amounts of tips.

Kellen hadn't really minded. He wasn't jealous or anything. It wasn't like she was shoving off to go live with them instead of him. And he knew that if he was going to make a living, he would have to capitalize on her eye-catching figure. But he was still protective of her. Especially when catcalls and longing eyes had turned into fondling and groping.

Talia hadn't reacted adversely. She was used to her body being treated like an object (much to Kellen's chagrin). But what had steamed him the most about the situation was the look that she threw him whenever such an occurrence had arisen. Her reasoning was clear – she was being touched by someone other than her master. Was this permissible? How was she to know? She must inquire with her master to seek his approval before continuing.

Except that this still meant she was thinking with the slave girl mentality, and not the mentality of a normal, free thinking woman – namely, to slap the unsightly patron upside the head.

When Talia had failed to do this, Kellen had picked up the slack.

After the first angered customer had left in disgust, the owner of the Cantina, an old Dug named Biff, had given Kellen a stern talking-to about treating the customers with respect and allowing them to have their way. He had grudgingly agreed, with Talia hanging her head sullenly, as though she'd been the one who'd caused the problem.

Kellen had braced himself for the next inevitable run-in, and had practically seen it coming when a well-to-do middle-aged overweight Corellian trader with a bad comb-over had come strutting in, bearing a set of blaster pistols and a grin that made him look like he owned the place. It had been apparent by the way that all the other customers (not to mention other waitresses) had shied away from him that he would be trouble.

And Talia, innocent and ignorant as she was, had approached him without a second thought.

Needless to say, his hands had been on her within minutes.

Needless to say, Kellen had laid him flat on the floor in the two seconds it had taken him to clear the distance between tables.

The result had been a shooting match – which wasn't much of a match, considering neither Kellen nor Talia owned any firearms. Kellen had now been keeping his stun baton on him for situations like these, but against a blaster, his chances of getting a hit were slim. He had flipped over a table out of sheer instinct when he had seen the blaster, and before he knew it, he had pulled Talia behind the table to avoid the man's shooting. Just as Kellen had been preparing to rush the guy with his stun baton, Biff, the cantina owner, had jumped the guy, laying him flat once more, and throwing him from the premises.

Biff then promptly fired both Kellen and Talia.

"We were…fired?" Talia said, as though not understanding the word. The two of them were making the journey back to Kellen's apartment under the hot Tatooine suns. She thumbed through Kellen's holopad (an item which she had all but claimed for her own by now), and looked up the definition of the word, choosing to learn for herself rather than ask Dee.

"To ignite a flame…" she began to scroll through definitions. "To discharge from a weapon…to have lost one's job…"

Kellen winced as the full realization of what had happened sunk in.

"You mean…we lost our job?" she asked him, eyes on the verge of tears. "We can't go back to the cantina? We can't make money anymore?"

Kellen gave her a pitiful look. "I'm afraid so, Talia…but don't worry, we'll find a new job soon. I promise!"

Talia sniffed, still looking remorseful. "But…but…I liked it there! There were so many strange new people to meet every day, and everyone would tell me how pretty I looked, and everyone would give us money…"

Kellen offered a comforting pat on her shoulder.

"Would you want to work in a place that serves customers like that man who shot at us? Would you want to work for a boss who insisted you let those sleemo's touch you like that!?"

Talia's lower lip quivered. "If…if it makes money to help Kellen…then I don't mind…"

Kellen's hand tightened around her shoulder and she flinched.

"Money isn't everything, Talia!" Kellen scolded. "You shouldn't offer up your body like that. There are other ways of making money, and allowing people within such close proximity is dangerous! What is somebody tried to hurt you? I might not be able to come help next time!"

Talia stared at her feet. They had stopped walking.

"I…" Talia said, looking as though she knew the words she spoke would anger him. "…Don't mind…people touching me like that…"

"Well, I do!" Kellen hollered, grabbing her other shoulder, now holding her shoulders in both hands. "You're important to me, Talia! I don't want filth like that to even come near you, let alone touch you! Do you understand me?"

Talia was silent for a few moments as she shuffled her feet. Kellen was staring hard at her, waiting for a response. Pedestrians were passing them by as they stood in silence, before Kellen suddenly realized her cheeks were a redder hue than usual.

And she was smiling.

"Alright…" she said, looking up to him with elated eyes. He saw none of the remorse from before. In fact, she looked...grateful, almost. "I won't let anyone else touch me from now on."

Before Kellen could nod in approval, she had placed her lips on his, giving him a quick peck, before pulling away, anxiously, blushing even more than before. She wasn't used to playing the aggressor.

Kellen, for his part, felt color creep into his own cheeks, as he stared at her with something skin to a schoolboy crush, before shaking his head to clear his thoughts.

"Come on…let's go home and rest," he said, taking her by the arm. "Then tomorrow, we'll find a new job."

Talia smiled as she kept pace with him, holding his arm possessively.

"Find a job!"

xxxxx

Two weeks later, and as many jobs come and gone, their hopes had somewhat dimmed.

The very next place that had accepted their dual employment was a weapons dealership. Talia had been their advertising lady – her job had been to hold the sign up and direct customers into the store. Kellen's job as a repairman, however, had been a bit more challenging – seeing as how he didn't know the first thing about repairing weapons. He was promptly let go. And since neither wanted to work without the other, Talia quit immediately after.

The one after that was at a used droid lot, which had lasted even less time, when during their tour of the facility, Talia developed a sudden and hysterical fear of droids, despite having used an AI protocol on Kellen's holopad. When Kellen later showed her that Dee's face was representative of a droid's face, Talia had simply waved her hand through the hologram and said, "It's not real."

Around real droids, however, Talia nearly went into a panic, jumping about the room and knocking everything over from displays to shelving units to other droids, which only caused to terrify her even more, eventually fleeing the premises and getting herself lost again in the streets of Mos Espa, leaving Kellen to search her out once more.

Needless to say, the job was lost.

That night, as Kellen watched his options slowly dwindling, he decided to go out for a nightcap. Fixating Talia's attention on a holodrama he had pirated off the holonet, which would hopefully distract her while he was away for the evening, he latched the door and headed out to the cantina – a different one that the one he had been employed in, but thankfully, there were several in Mos Espa.

He was nonplussed by the sheer quantity of available drinks, ranging from smooth mixes from halfway across the galaxy, to local brews that bubbled and frothed with…something, that was either ice cold, or boiling hot, he was unable to tell.

He settled for something familiar – Jawa beer, the only real alcoholic beverage he or his parents had ever come across, from trading with the infamous scavengers who roamed Tatooine. He hadn't gotten to drink it much growing up, but his parents did occasionally bring some out on special occasions, like birthdays.

It was a familiar, comforting taste that left him feeling suddenly very homesick. He wanted to just leave Mos Espa, to leave Talia and his apartment and just go running home, crying to his parents that he had failed, that he had tried to make it in the big city, and he had gotten thrown out on his rear end.

But no, he decided. It wasn't just his life and his future now. He had a responsibility to Talia now, and for better or for worse, he had to stick it out for her sake at least. He couldn't go running home now, not until he had gotten her a stable job somewhere, and enabled her to take care of herself.

He frowned at the realization of what would happen after that. He would have to leave her, he realized. Maybe, she would have been better off at that weapons dealership, advertising for the store. He certainly had no aptitude for the job, but her position was open and waiting. If he could somehow convince her to work alone, and then slowly, ease her into doing the daily necessities on her own – not even basic things, like using a refresher or a knife and fork. Those things came easily to her! It was the more advanced stuff, like shopping responsibly for food and clothes, paying bills, dealing with strangers, or finding a new job should she happen to lose whichever job she had at the time.

She needed to be raised properly to be an adult, he realized. She didn't need him, a bumbling nerf-herder, stumbling through life, barely able to support himself. She needed a parent, someone who could raise and nurture her, to make up for her years lost to the brutal lifestyle of slavery. The last thing she needed was some fool moisture farm boy who could barely control his own hormones around the girl.

"Kark it all…" he grumbled to himself, downing the last of his Jawa beer. This was all too big for him to deal with. The best thing to do would be to get Talia to some kind of therapist, someone who could work with her to make her see the world from the perspective of a free woman. Therapists were expensive, however, and on this backwater planet, there was no such thing as Galactic Health Insurance.

The next best thing would be, he realized with a pang of guilt, would be for him to take her home to his mother and father, and assuming they weren't turned away out of spite, leave her in his parent's care. Leave them with another mouth to feed, while he still had nothing to show for it.

No, he decided. Even if he were to succumb to that fate, he must first earn some money, something to make it all up to them, something to make it worth their while…

Something to make him worth their while.

"Stang…" he rested his forehead on the heel of his hand, his elbow on the counter. "What am I gonna do?"

His attention was diverted when a glass of an amber frothy concoction slid his way.

"Drink up, kid," same a charming sounding male voice. "It's on me. So why don't you tell me about your problems?"

Kellen glanced up at the newcomer. He was a spacer by the look of him, a blaster slung careless at his side, and a devil-may-care smile on his face. Carefree eyes looked at him beneath a frilly mop of chocolate brown hair and above a face full of stubble.

Oddly, Kellen's first question was not to discern the man's identity, nor his sudden inexplicable concern for Kellen's peril, but simply: "What is this?" gesturing at the glass.

"Lomin Ale," he smiled playfully, gesturing to his half empty glass of a similar looking stuff. "The kind they make here isn't half bad, if you ask me."

Kellen watched him guzzle down the remainder of his glass, and decided that it wouldn't hurt just to taste it. It was free after all.

He took a sip, and found it warm and surprisingly sweet. The frothy coating on top bubbled in his mouth and fizzed on the way down, and he had to agree that the experience of drinking the ale was a pleasant one.

"There you go," the stranger said, clapping Kellen on the back. "So, what seems to be the problem, kiddo?"

Before Kellen could answer, an accusatory voice called out from a table on the far side of the cantina.

"Dak, are you hassling the locals again?"

Kellen and who he guessed was Dak both turned at the voice. It was undeniably female, and held an air of authority, both of which mirrored the face of the woman who had issued the query. Maybe it was the effects of the alcohol – Kellen didn't normally drink more than one glass per sitting, and who knew what was in that drink "Dak" had given him. But the woman who caught Kellen's eye at that moment was absolutely gorgeous, with long, straight bronze hair and gleaming blue eyes.

Dak, now looking sheepish and guilty, just scratched his head. "Sorry, honey. Just trying to make some new friends."

The woman rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Yeah, right – trying to shanghai new recruits is more like it. Son, is this laser-brain bothering you?"

Kellen glanced at Dak, and then at the drink in his hands. "Uhh…no, not really…" he offered weakly.

The lady smiled, crossing her arms, not moving from her seat at the table. "Well, don't let him fool you, kid. He'll tell you stories about treasure hunting and space pirates, and not a word of it's true! He's as slippery as a greased dug, this guy!"

Kellen watched Dak place his free hand over his heart, and by his stagger, suddenly realized that the cheerful man was quite drunk. "Aldrea, you wound me! I was merely offering to listen to this boy's troubles! See if we couldn't help each other out!"

The woman – Aldrea – still had her arms crossed, and was staring at Dak in distaste. "Oh, yeah? And what state of mind are you in right now to be hiring on help at this stage? We've been on this damn rock for near on a month now! What makes you think we'll find another operator in this scum hive, and at a cantina, no less!?"

Dak spread his arms wide. "Sweetness, I'm just buying the fellow a drink. What's the harm?"

Aldrea seemed to take the pet name as an insult and got to her feet. "Don't you 'sweetness' me, you kriffing nerf-herder! We've been following your karking instincts this whole trip! And what has it gotten us? A planet load of nothing!"

Kellen remained silent through the ordeal, his drink all but forgotten, sure that he'd somehow started this whole mess. Very quickly, he'd watched what he'd thought was jovial couple break down into an all out shouting match.

"Darling, I-"

This time, Dak didn't even get to finish the thought.

"Dak, I swear by the Force, this is it!" Aldrea glared, ruefully. "We are through! I have had it with your stupid theories and conjectures that never see either of us through to the end! I am out of here!"

With that, she stormed out of the cantina in a huff, leaving Kellen, Dak, and several other patrons, looking baffled and ill at ease.

After a long minute, Dak turned to look at Kellen, his expression suddenly impossible to read.

"Well…that could have gone better…" he admitted, pointing to Kellen's half finished glass of Lomin Ale. "You gonna finish that?"

Kellen handed the glass to him without thinking. "Shouldn't you go after her?"

He spoke without thinking, but it was what he'd have done. Especially if he had been involved with a woman that pretty. From what he'd gleamed from the argument, the two of them had come here in a ship. Were he in Dak's position, he would have crossed the entire galaxy to make it up to the woman he cared for. Or maybe the alcohol was just making him melodramatic.

"Nah…" Dak said, sliding into the seat next to Kellen's. "She'll come around eventually. She always does." He downed the remainder of the ale in a single shot, and ordered two more for himself and for Kellen. "We came here on a treasure hunt, which has so far been…unsuccessful, so say the least. In that much, she's absolutely right. I did kind of promise her riches beyond her wildest dreams. Guess maybe I was just being too fanciful in my old age. Sure would help if we could hire on some local help though…"

He sipped his glass of ale, which left a frothy mustache on his upper lip.

"But enough about me," he grinned wryly, seemingly at ease with the fresh induction of alcohol. "Tell me about yourself, kid."

Kellen looked at the strange man with something that was a mix of sympathy, kinship, and respect. They were both two men, out of their element, with women that they each cared for and needed to support, and with no clear path about where to go next.

And so, Kellen began his tale.