Author's Note: I picture this chapter taking place about three days after the conclusion of Call of the Mockingbird.
The Welcoming Hypothesis
Coth Fuuras Space Station
Wren slammed the cabinet shut with a growl. "Fek."
"Wh's d'matter?" a sleepy voice asked from behind him.
Wren glanced over his shoulder to see Ro standing at the entrance to the Mockingbird's galley, rubbing sleep out of her eyes with one fist.
Despite his growing foul mood, Wren felt his lips twitch involuntarily at the sight of his so-called 'partner'.
Ro's long mass of pale blond hair was a knotted mess and stuck out slightly to one side, giving her a lop-sided appearance. Her normally thick tangle of bangs was matted to her forehead and she peered at him through slitted, sleep-swollen eyes. There were pillow creases on one cheek and the fuzzy, light blue nightgown with the bright yellow birds she'd worn to bed looked at least one size too big and reached all the way down to the tips of her white - and equally fuzzy - Lepi slippers.
Still half-asleep on her feet and in that outfit, Ro looked like a youngling and about as threatening as a tumble bunny.
"Nice outfit," he told her by way of greeting. "I see you've decided to strike down the Seps by inducing fekking laugh-aneurysms."
Some of the sleepiness disappeared out of her oval face, to be replaced by a scowl.
"Did I miss the memo about 'good morning' going out of style?" she asked, an edge of petulance to her voice.
"Good kriffing morning," he snapped. "We're out of vaping caf."
This garnered him a few blinks. Ro brushed her bangs out of her eyes and shuffled towards the row of cabinets, trying to finger-comb her wild hair into some order while she was at it.
Ro peered first into the cabinet on his left, then reached up into the one he'd just finished ransacking, taking down the tin she'd used to store the caf beans. Taking off the lid, she gazed down into the empty container for a good, long while, as if trying to determine the location of the tin's missing contents via the leftover caf grinds.
"Hmmm," she hummed lightly under her breath.
"Well?" he asked, patience running dangerously low. Wren was not a morning person, even with caf at hand.
"We are poselutely out of caf." She nodded sagely along with her words, as if agreeing with herself.
"I can fekking see that for myself," he snapped.
"Well, then why did you ask?" she wanted to know.
"I kriffing didn't!"
She blinked, cocking her head to the side in the manner she adopted when carefully considering something. "You know," she finally said, "I believe you're right. About the caf and the asking."
Wren hissed in frustration, pinching the bridge of his nose. It was too Force-forsaken fardling early for this.
"Where do you keep the crinking caf on this over-painted bird?"
"Right here," was Ro's slightly sheepish answer and she held out the empty tin. Then embarrassment turned into a frown. "And what do you have against Mockingbird's ink?"
Ignoring the latter question, Wren focused on her first statement. "Are you telling me there's no more kriffing caf onboard?"
"Why would there be?" she asked in turn. "I don't drink the stuff."
"You don't..." Wren didn't hold much to convention, but this was about as close to blasphemy as he'd ever heard. "But there was caf yesterday and the fekking day before." He knew he had not imagined that; nothing in this galaxy could quite taste like the brew the Grand Army served as 'caf'.
"Well sure. But that was the caf I filched from Eyat Base's mess hall." She rattled the tin under his nose. "Which is mono gono now."
"Why the fek didn't you take enough for the entire stanging trip to Ansion?" he asked angrily.
"Because we're stopping halfway at Coth Fuuras." And she gestured out of one of the viewports and at the giant docking bay they'd been directed to during the last cycle.
Wren ran a hand over his short-cropped hair, muttering about barvy fems who were too thermal to grasp the importance of a steady and regular caf supply.
"Then kriffing get some," he growled.
"I don't drink it," she repeated and poked a finger into his chest. "You get the caf." She gestured again at the giant space station surrounding them. "I'm sure there's oodles of caf in the station's shops."
"Me?" He blinked down at her in surprise.
"Sure." She brushed past him and opened a drawer on the other side of the galley, rummaging through the contents before coming up with a flat, square piece of plasti. "Take the account card." She flipped the card towards him and he caught it easily one-handed. "Buy some nuna eggs while you're at it." She yawned hugely and started shuffling back towards the corridor and the ship's cabins, then stopped, turning back to eye him critically. "Might wanna think about putting on some civvie masc threads," she told him, pointing at the black bodylgove he was wearing, a wicked smile on her lips. "That leaves emtix to an indecent imagination. There should be some practical threads in the third cabin, second closet to the left. And we could use some more milk, the way you're scarfing down those flatcakes."
Then she was down the corridor.
"Wait! Ro!" He stormed after her, grabbing the little nuisance by the elbow. "You can't be karking serious."
"Why not?" She turned on him, yanking her elbow out of his grasp.
"Because I've never kriffing used one of these!" And he waved the account card under her nose.
Ro sniffed, non-plussed. "Well then, it's time and tick-tocks past that Cookie learns. New experiences are good for body, mind and soul."
"Ro..."
"I'm going back to catch some more winks on the zee's-cruiser. You have fun with that." And she pointed at the account card. "But not tons. I'm not made out of creds."
And before he could say anything else, she slipped out from beneath his grasp and back into her cabin, closing the door in his face.
Wren gaped at the cabin door, torn between utter outrage and total bafflement. He considered slicing into the door controls and dragging her back out by her absurd hair, then realized how ridiculous such a reaction would make him appear.
This was about fekking caf.
He was a highly-trained soldier, a kriffing ARC. He was capable of getting his own caf.
Muttering harsh invectives, Wren turned to exit the ship, then stopped, reconsidering. He looked down at himself and the bodyglove he wore. "Ah, fierfek."
He stalked over to the cabin that had been introduced to him as Ro's "work and supply station". The cabin had been re-fitted, so that three of the walls were lined with floor to ceiling cabinets, drawers and wardrobes. The wall on the far right featured a large workstation, which could be pulled out of a compartment set into the wall.
He hadn't had a chance to go through every single drawer yet, but Wren had the feeling that even if he had, there'd be more little treasures hidden away, out of sight. Ro had the air of a little magpie, secreting away shiny things.
He opened the second closet to the left and indeed, there were several items of male clothing filling up half of the closet's space.
"Do I even want to know?" he wondered. "Not effing likely."
It took a while, but he did manage to find a shirt and pants that more or less fit him. Most of the clothes appeared to be in Ro's size, but this particular set was big, even on him. The shirt smelled of soap and a very faint, but distinctly alien, musky scent.
Did these clothes belong to Ro's brother or, more likely, her adoptive father?
"Kriff it. I'll find the fek out later."
He pulled on the shirt and pants over his bodyglove, tucking the account card into a pocket.
Ro poked her head out of her cabin, once she was certain Wren's distinctive Force-signature was well away from Mockingbird's dock.
"Stellar." She dashed out of her cabin, into the ship's 'fresher and back out in record time, twisting the wet mass of her hair into a knot.
"Artee!" she called up to the cockpit once she was back in the galley. "Stop moping and get your tinnie non-existent behind down here! Operation Surprise is a go!"
She crouched before a cabinet and began pulling out boxes and canisters of paint, while Artee began his barrage of objections and complaints.
Ro blew the bangs out of her eyes. "Nerve-frazzled droid," she muttered under her breath. "Memo to self: Don't let Artee watch holo-serials with you no more. He's learning way mono too many drama dialogues. Artee!" she hollered, cutting the astromech off mid-protest. "Either get your circuits down here or I tell Eda what really happened to her Huj mat!"
Silence, then a meek affirmative tootle.
Ro grinned, shaking her head as she checked that she had everything she would need. She'd been planning this 'Welcome Aboard' party for Wren ever since leaving Gaftikar and she'd "requisitioned" quite a few things from the Eyat Base in the half-hour he'd needed to pack his things. But she hadn't calculated on getting such a bombad perfect opportunity to shoo him off the ship before Ansion. Now she had to scramble to get everything ready before he came back from his shopping trip.
Which, given Coth Fuuras' security protocols, his general attitude and the fact that there were almost a hundred other spacecrafts docked and resupplying, should take him a good bit of tick-tocks.
With a hum of his repulsors, Artee came floating down the cockpit, still grumbling about the entire idea.
"Stop complaining. This'll be mono prime fun," she told him and shoved a box of flimsi streamers into his claw arm. "Here, you take care of the galley and get the cake started. I'm gonna get started on Cookie's present."
She gathered up the pots of paint in her arms, leaving a shrilly complaining Artee to handle things in the galley. This was. Going to be. Stellar!
Ro could hardly wait to see Cookie's reaction to her surprise. Skipping to his cabin, she began to sing: "Funfunfunfun-funfunfunfun, oh-funfunfunfunnnnn."
Wren fought the urge to kick the ship's ramp as it lowered and managed a compromise. Instead of the ship, he kicked one of the many servo-droids that scuttled about the docking bay, this one a boxy contraption responsible for keeping the floors clean.
The droid let out an electronic squeal as it was booted halfway through the docking bay, turning end over end before slamming into the opposing wall. It righted itself laboriously, then let out a flood of sharp shrills and a clanker's invectives.
Wren snarled at the thing. "Go fekking tell it to someone who gives an effing kriff." And he stalked up the ramp, ignoring the looks he was getting from the station's maintenance personnel and the crew members from other docked ships.
He was not. In the karking. Mood.
But once in Mockingbird's hangar bay, despite his anger at the kriffing civvies and all the inane processes they'd come up with to make a single effing task like buying caf almost kriffing impossible, he became aware that something was off.
His head came up like an akk dog scenting danger.
The ship was too quite.
Wren had a split second to process this fact before Ro jumped out from behind one of the crates, throwing bits of flimsi into the air.
"Surprise!"
The holdout blaster he'd strapped to the small of his back, beneath his civvy shirt, was out and aimed at the space between her eyes before the last syllable had left her mouth, the bag of groceries falling to the deck plates, spilling caf, milk and cracked nuna eggs everywhere.
Ro and Wren froze and then Artee shot out from his own hiding space, just that second slower than his organic, tootling something that sounded like a sullen imitation of Ro's own shout. More of the colorful flimsi bits were sprouting from the top of the astromech's domed head.
And then things started to get really kriffing vaped.
At Artee's appearance, Wren had instinctively shifted the muzzle of his blaster so that he could cover both potential targets. Artee realized his peril almost in the same instant.
The slightly petulant tone of his electronic whistles turned into full-out shrilling panic. The droid hit a pitch no Human ear could withstand without starting to bleed as its domed head began to spin wildly and it careened to and fro, trying to make for the cargo hold's exit, but managing to bounce against every available crate in the process.
Ro and Wren had jumped almost a meter each at Artee's ear-splitting shrieks, Wren barely avoiding slipping in the growing puddle of milk and egg yolk as he tried to get as far away from the barvy clanker as possible.
Ro had to scramble atop of a crate in order to save herself from being run-over by her astromech as Artee made for the exit, sparks beginning to shoot out of his domed head.
The droid didn't make it far.
It missed the doorframe by a good three centimeters and crashed - radar eye first - into the wall. The impact caused more sparks to shoot out of its top and with a resounding crash, the astromech fell flat on its back and did not get back up again.
Astonished, Ro and Wren exchanged a look.
"Uhm." Ro scratched her head, looking embarrassed. "Surprise?"
Wren stared at her - she was back to wearing that karking awful dress with the dizzying array of colors and geometric patterns - then at the self-immobilized droid and finally at the spoiled fruits of his nerve-wracking labor. Scraps of colorful flimsi were soaking in the milk and all seven of the caf bags he'd bought had burst open, spilling beans and ground caf everywhere. The nuna eggs were a total loss.
He took a deep breath, trying to marshal what little patience he had while ignoring the sharp rise of his temper. His hands itched with the urge to wring her scrawny little neck, but his more rational side argued that this was probably some kind of stanging barvy civvy thing of hers. So instead, he pinched the bridge of his nose, but did not holster his blaster. The rotation had barely started; he could always decide to shoot the little nuisance later.
"What. The. Fek. Cheeka?" he ground out between clenched teeth.
"It's a surprise party," she explained, a smile that was, in his opinion, far too bright for the situation gracing her lips. At his glare, the smile wavered slightly. "You know...for you?"
"Mission accomplished," he spat. "I'm kriffing surprised." He waved at the downed droid with his blaster. "Effing surprised you haven't thrown that fardling tinnie on the Junk World yet." Then, despite his best efforts, his rage swamped him. "And I'm fekking surprised you're still breathing. Fierfek, cheeka. Don't you have even enough crinking sense to effing know not to jump out at a vaping soldier? I could have killed you."
The smile was completely gone now, replaced by a frown. Ro jumped off the crate and planted her fists on her hips. "Now I'd be a bombad lousy saber jockey if I couldn't skedooch away from a measly blaster bolt."
"Without your glowsticks?" he sneered.
Ro's twin lightsabers had not fared well on Gaftikar. One had been completely destroyed when the floor of the mine shaft they'd been exploring had collapsed due to an explosion. The saber had suffered the fate they'd barely escaped, crushed beneath the falling rock with only the crystal left in tact. Her second lightsaber had been cannibalized for parts, so that Ro and Wren could effect their escape from the mine, which had been steadily filling up with toxic fumes.
She didn't have the necessary spare parts aboard the ship to complete the needed repairs, so what was left of her lightsabers was safely stored in a box beneath her bunk. And even a karking clone like Wren knew that without lightsabers, a Jedi was pretty much fekked.
Ro flushed at the reminder. "Well, if you didn't have such mono bad impulse control, then I wouldn't have to be dodging blaster bolts, would I?"
Wren felt the heat suffuse him. "If I kriffing had poor impulse control," he shouted at her, "then you wouldn't still be effing standing there!"
"I was trying to be nice!" she shouted back. "I was trying to throw you a party with confetti and cake and presents..."
"Stop." He held up a hand, feeling a headache come on. "Cake? Presents?" He didn't know which sounded more ominous.
And just like that, all the anger left Ro's face, as if wiped away with a polishing cloth, to be replaced by a beaming smile. "Yes, silly Cookie, presents." She clapped her hands together, squealing in delight and before he could stop her, she lunged for him, grabbing him by the arm. With a strength that never ceased to astound Wren, Ro hauled him after her, out of the cargo hold and into the single, narrow corridor of the ship.
He tried to resist, but even a stubborn barve like he knew the look of a fight he wouldn't be able to win. Still, pride prompted him to at least try. "What about your fekking clanker?"
"Artee?" she asked sweetly, as if she wasn't quite certain who he was talking about and wanted to make sure, for politeness' sake. "He'll be prime. High-strung nerves will get you into a mono tizzy, but after a good reboot he'll be back to his lovable, hypochondriac self."
"You talk about the tincan like it's an effing person." Her attitude was utterly incomprehensible to him, but then, Wren had so far witnessed little behavior on Ro's part that he could understand. The current situation was just the tip of the effing asteroid.
"Well, he does have personality," she retorted cheerfully. "That's five letters more than required."
He wondered if this conversation would make more sense if he slammed his head against the wall. Or hers.
"Hit the brakes."
They stopped and much to his growing horror, he realized they were standing in front of the door to his cabin.
"Open it," Ro urged with unrestrained excitement, jumping up and down where she stood, causing the mass of her hair to bounce. "Open it, open it."
Wren eyed the cabin's door as if it might open on Grievous and a battalion of SBDs, weighing his options. Either he complied or he ended both of their misery right here and now.
He chose the first option. He was just too much of a hard-bitten bastard to admit defeat in the face of a barvy little nuisance who didn't even quite come up to his shoulder. With a feeling of imminent doom, Wren opened the door and stepped inside the cabin, Ro hot on his heels.
Mockingbird was a decently sized ship and all four of the cabins, as well as the galley, were practically luxurious, compared to what Wren had been used to from Kamino and the GAR. The three cabins that acted as living-quarters were all furnished with a small desk and chair, a bunk that was almost twice as wide as the regulation issue rack Wren had slept in for most of his eleven years and a small but functional sink in one corner, as well as more storage space than Wren knew what to do with.
He'd chosen the least offensive cabin upon settling in and his first glance took in the walls and ceiling, half-dreading Ro had taken it into her head to re-decorate his living space in her own warped image. But the walls were still an innocuous panorama of a far-reaching, grassy plain and the ceiling remained a - he had to admit - breathtaking reproduction of the Churnis sector's starscape.
Wren shot a glance at Ro, who was standing behind him with her folded hands pressed against her mouth, an eager, anticipatory gleam in her eyes and in that motion caught sight of his bunk.
He stared.
His armor had been neatly laid out on the bunk, his bucket resting on his pillow as if his armor had decided to climb out of the footlocker and take a quick nap in its owner's absence.
Except, it was no longer quite his armor.
Instead of scuffed, charred and scraped white, the plastoid plates were covered in a black and grey camo pattern.
Breath left his body in a hiss.
"Isn't it stellar?" Ro squealed. "Do you like it? It looks bombad bad-choobies, don't it? Totally mono you, right?"
Her voice was drowned out by the buzz in his ears. Wren whirled and slammed his fist into the bulkhead next to Ro's head, causing her to flinch back.
"You. Bitch." He was so angry, the words came out in a low growl. "You. Fekking. Bitch." Before she could slip away, Wren grabbed her by her thin shoulders and shook her violently with every word. "How kriffing dare you touch my gear?"
"I-I thought..."
"You didn't effing think!" he interrupted her, giving her a final shake before forcefully pushing her away. If he kept his hands on her for one more karking second, he really would break her neck. "Get out!"
"But I..."
"Get! Out!" And he pushed her again, hard enough that she stumbled backwards out of his cabin and slammed into the corridor's wall. Ro's teal eyes had grown to the size of saucers in bewilderment and they were wet with unshed tears.
He didn't give a kriff. Wren punched the slap pad and the door swished shut. Then he drove his fist into the bulkhead again.
Flesh hit durasteel with a wet smack and searing pain shot up his arm and into his shoulder as bones ground against one another. But the pain helped to disperse the rage, drove the red swamping his vision back and gave him a foothold.
He took deep breaths, trying with all his might to hang on to his sanity and not give in to the urge to go back out there and kill that karking little Jedi bitch for daring to...
Don't effing think about it.
Wren leaned his forehead against the door, letting the durasteel cool his fevered skin. At his sides, his fists clenched and unclenched, too close to his holstered blaster for comfort and safety.
It had been madness for him to accept her proposal.
Not even three full days in each others company and already she'd driven him into a rampaging bloodlust. He'd kill her if he stayed on. Fek, he'd almost killed her down in the mine, when she'd invaded his mind with her Force-healing...
Don't. There was another thing he shouldn't think about, unless he wanted to burst a blood vessel.
How could someone so effing tiny be such a huge pain in his arse?
Wren exhaled sharply, feeling his self-control reestablish itself. He hated losing it like this almost as much as he hated what she'd done to his armor.
He kicked the door and turned back to his bunk, feeling marginally better prepared to inspect the damage.
The camo job, he realized upon closer inspection, was not standard regulation, though the design did resemble the pattern used by the shadow troopers - that elite cadre that consisted more of rumors than facts and who were supposedly meant to fill in the dwindling ARC ranks, though Wren had yet to see one with his own eyes. But it was obvious Ro had not adhered to the traditional GAR pattern.
Wren ran a finger over one of his greaves; stretching along one side was a smoky blotch of grey where there should have been black. And though the paint job was as monochrome as it should have been, Wren could identify more shades of black and grey in a single glance than he'd ever thought existed.
He made a sound in the back of his throat and picked up his bucket.
A good half of the plastoid plates had been destroyed in the explosion in the mine and his helmet too had turned out to be damaged beyond repair. This one was a replacement from Eyat Base's supplies, but Ro had copied his original helmet's design and the two lightning bolts ran in a jagged line from the top of his bucket over the T-shaped visor, their crimson color a dramatic contrast to the black and grey.
Wren turned the bucket over in his hands. There were three smoky-blue chevrons painted on the right side of the helmet; his new rank insignia. According to the GAR regs, such insignia were to be placed on a shoulder bell or chest plate; somewhere where the enemy couldn't immediately identify the officers from the nomcoms. Having his lieutenant's insignia on the side of his helmet wasn't just in defiance of the regs, it was a challenge to every passing sniper to take his or its best shot.
Wren made another sound, this one slightly more approving and set his helmet back down, picking up a poleyn. The plate that covered his right knee was one of the few pieces that had survived the Gaftikar venture. He turned it this way and that, brushing against the paint with the sensitive pads of his fingers. There'd been a deep scratch on this particular poleyn, a souvenir from his time on Qiilura. Like most of the 35th, he'd helped train the locals as resistance fighters and once the Seps had been defeated, he'd helped roust those same locals and boot them off the planet they'd risked their lives to defend. The woman he'd been sleeping with at the time - one of his trainees - had taken exception to that and had tried to cripple him in revenge by taking out the vulnerable knee joint. She'd underestimated the strength of plastoid armor, however, and his own reflexes. The fight had left him with a scored poleyn and her leaving on the next refugee transport with a black eye and a broken wrist.
Some troopers, when painting their armor, simply painted over the old damage, but Ro had actually incorporated the old nicks and scuffs into the overall camo design. This particular scratch was now a deep black line surrounded by three different shades of grey.
The little nuisance couldn't actually understand what those gouges and scratches meant to a trooper. She was a karking Jedi, after all. A nosy, interfering little bitch. Scratches on previously immaculate white armor couldn't be more than imperfections to her. Right? She wouldn't be able to see them as the badges of honor and courage that they were, the symbols of a trooper's experience and his tenacity.
Jedi didn't understand clone traditions. Didn't give a kriff. That was an effing fact.
Wren put the poleyn back in its place and took a step back, taking the armor in as a whole.
Against the dark tan of the blankets, the black and white camo pattern made the armor appear very dark, sleek and dangerous.
A tentative knock on the door roused him from his contemplation.
"What the fek do you want, cheeka?" he snapped, without turning around. He wasn't quite done being angry with her yet.
"May I come in?" The question was asked so meekly, that despite himself, Wren turned around, eyebrows raised in surprise. He'd never heard Ro speak in that tone before.
He opened the door to find the little nuisance standing on the other side, head slightly bowed with a plate in her hands. And on that plate...
Wren's nostrils flared as the thick, heavy scent of chocolate wafted up to him. He'd only had chocolate twice before in his life, but those meager tastes had been enough to hook him instantly.
Sensing his interest, Ro peeked up at him from beneath the cover of her long, unruly bangs and shyly offered him the plate on which lay half a cake, covered in a thick layer of chocolate. Atop the chocolate, in green frosting, were several Aurebesh letters: 'come oard'.
"It's your Welcome Aboard cake," she explained. She scuffed the toe of one shoe along the deck plates. "I figured, well, maybe we could do a fifty-fifty split and I guess you don't want to come to the galley to eat with me, since you're mad at me and all, so I thought I'd bring you your share." She smiled at him uncertainly. "Room service style, you know?"
No, he actually didn't know. The only person who'd ever brought him food had been Thrush.
In those early days of his exile to the ground-pounders, Wren had had some difficulties adjusting to the more regimented training curriculum of the regular troopers and his occasional bouts of typical ARC creativity had gotten him into a fair amount of trouble. There'd been one time, when the punishment detail assigned to him had been rigorous enough that, atop of a very strenuous day, he'd simply fallen into his sleep bunker without even taking off his wet fatigues. Three hours later - one of the longest periods he'd ever slept uninterrupted - there'd been Thrush with a fistful of protein cubes he'd smuggled out of the mess hall.
It had been a good gesture on Thrush's part, but protein cubes were nothing compared to cake and chocolate.
At his continued silence, Ro began to shift uneasily, her eyes flicking this way and that. "Look, Coo-Wren, I-I'm sorry, 'kay? I didn't mean anything by it. Well, I did mean for the armor to be a stellar surprise, but I guess the stellar part just kind of fell flat." She tugged on her Padawan braid, biting her lip, looking not in the least like a Jedi at that moment, but more like a shiny waiting to be excoriated by a superior. Then the words tumbled out of her in a flood. "It's just, I heard all the other mascs talk about painting their armor and what designs they want in the base's mess hall and on the parade grounds and well, practically everywhere and it just seems like something bombad special, so I thought, if I give you a stellar paint job, then it would be a mono bombad prime treat and just...well...make you happy, because I'd like to see you more on the happy, but I guess I jumped the blaster big time and now I just ruined your surprise party and got you all mad and I'm really, really mono sorry about that and..." She finally took a breath, letting it all out in a rush. "I can take it off," she offered in a half-whisper, looking once more down at her shoes. "The paint, I mean. If you want."
Wren regarded this slip of a girl for a very, very long time; long enough to cause her to squirm again like a gooberfish on the line.
He took the plate out of her hands and with a flash of hope in those bright teal eyes, she offered him a fork as well.
Wren took the fork and leaned against the doorframe, starting in on the cake. It's texture was thick and loose all at the same time, the chocolate coating melting against his tongue and lining the inside of his mouth, covering the last of the bitter taste of his anger.
"You're the biggest effing nuisance this side of the Black Nebula, cheeka."
She hung her head. "I know."
"You crossed the karking line."
"I know."
"That's my effing gear and you had no stanging right to touch it without my fekking permission." Which wasn't at all true. Technically, she was his commanding officer, not to mention a Jedi and the armor didn't really belong to him. He, like it, was GAR equipment, issued to the Jedi to be used and disposed of as they pleased. She could have put the armor through the vaping garbage disposal and he wouldn't have been able to do a fraggin' thing about it - technically, anyway. But he wasn't about to tell her that and Ro was vigorously nodding along with his words, her eyes huge and earnest.
"I know and I promise, I won't ever do it again. I'll ask first. I promise."
"You'd crinking better," he snapped, jabbing his fork in her direction. Then, remembering the striking contrast between his crimson lightning bolts and the rest of the black and grey camo design and the care with which the armor's scuff marks had been incorporated, Wren gave - just a fraction of an inch. "And I'll effing do the same."
Her eyes went even wider at his concession, small though it was. He hated himself for being weak enough to be diverted from his righteous anger by cake and an - admittedly - better paint job than he could have managed, but the concession to her also appealed to his sense of fairness - what little he had of it. A trooper's gear was sacrosanct. Ro was no trooper, but he'd seen the devastation on her face when he'd handed her back what little remained of her lightsaber and he'd heard enough of the glow jockeys talk to understand that it was probably the same for them.
She'd crossed a line, but that didn't mean he had to do the same to get back at her for it.
Despite her continued contriteness, a smile was working its way back onto Ro's face and Wren, seeing it, felt a flash of vexation and reluctant admiration for the little nuisance. Nothing, not even his temper, ever seemed to keep her down for long.
"So," she asked hesitantly, "you...like the paint job?"
Wren ate another forkful of cake, taking his sweet time in chewing, deliberately letting her stew some more.
It wasn't until she'd started fidgeting again that he swallowed and answered her with a nonchalant shrug. "I've seen worse."
Her face brightened to sunspot intensity and with a squeal, she stepped forward, arms outstretched, her intention to hug him again clear on her face. Wren stiffened and took a step back.
"Ooops." Ro dropped her arms, clasping her hands behind her back, as if physically restraining herself, and smiled up at him sheepishly. "Sorry. I forgot." She looked down for a moment and when she met his eyes again, her face was unusually solemn. "I'm not..." she hesitated, her eyes roaming the corridor nervously. "I'm not...always so good at controlling myself. I just - I don't know - get carried away by the moment, I guess. It's not good Jedi behavior," she admitted shame-facedly, her cheeks flushing slightly at the admission, "that's why I've never had a partner before you. Not everyone likes what I do." She peered at him through the thick curtain of her hair. "But I promise I'll try to remember around you, Wren." A look of determination and pride crossed her mobile face. "And I do keep my promises."
Wren regarded her for a long moment, then glanced back at his newly painted armor, laid out neatly on his bunk. His armor. His bunk. His room, which Ro had told him time and again he could do with whatever he liked. He stared back down at the little Jedi. His partner; for now, anyway.
He'd never owned so many things before in his life.
Plate still in hand, more than half of the cake already gone, Wren shouldered past Ro and made his way to the galley.
"I'll have more of this," he told her, slightly raising his plate for her to see. "And once I have, you get more fekking caf, cheeka."
Ro whooped and raced after him, starting a lengthy - and speedy - explanation of all the many ways in which you could bake a chocolate cake and wondering loudly what variety she should try next and what occasion should be contrived for the baking.
And in-between she managed a swift squeeze of his arm, which he only let her get the kriff away with because killing her would have meant dropping his current forkful of cake.
From the cargo hold, there came a timid and unsteady beep as Artee's systems finished rebooting and the droid awoke from its 'faint'. The domed head swiveled back and forth and his three stumpy legs began to move up and down as they searched for traction. Finding none and realizing that he was stuck flat on his back, Artee began to shrill for Ro, demanding that his organic return and help right him this nanosecond.
Rule #3: Respect the fekking gear.
Rule #4: Ignore boundaries and take the consequences with a sunk head or smile. Apply as needed.