"When are you going to trust me?" she shrieked at him the second she turned back around.

He jumped. He'd been nearly asleep. Having taken the first watch After having marched the fekking bottoms of his feet off, he'd not even bothered pulling up his book. Didn't need it to find his way to that path toward REM-state.

"The kriff?!"

She picked up a torch and threw it at him. Threw her canteen and a roll of gods knew what.

"Did you get bit by some fever-fly!?" he shouted at her. Deflected the next volley.

"I'm so tired of you acting like you're the only one who can keep an eye on things, just because you've got that fucking BUCKET you're so proud of! I can damned well keep watch while you sleep for two goddamned hours! You don't have to stay alert while I'm taking my shift! I hate you! You're so insufferable! Do you think you're truly so superior to me that you can hike for days and days and days and never once lie down!? Is it a contest! Gotta show up the little woman!? Or you just treat everyone you meet like they don't know what they're doing! I've stood a goddamned watch before!"
Mird hissed but didn't come out from shelter—crouched behind Vau and the pack he'd been leaning on. A little paw came out and batted at the cannister she'd chunked last. A slight hissing was escaping it.

Awesome.

"What the hell flew up your bonnet?" Vau roared back. He got to his feet. "You throw one more thing at me and I swear to every god your people ever worshipped I will turn you over my knee and tan your hide!"

"Try it!" she challenged, that chin hitting a new angle of superiority as she stuck that nose in the air.

He wanted to take up a handful of that hair and bang her head against the cave wall.

No. What he wanted to do was fist that hair in his hands and bang her against the cave wall. But he didn't think she'd appreciate the distinction any more than he appreciated his abbreviated nap so he could witness her tantrum.

"Get your shit policed back up and leave me the fek alone," he hissed at her.

"Fine. Have it your way. Don't sleep. Maybe you'll fall off the side of the mountain."

"I was trying to sleep," he complained. "And doing a damned close job of it before your psycho-storm hit!"

He thought she might actually explode, the way her face worked in irritation.

He huffed, picked up a couple things that hadn't bounced off of him, and slung them back toward her. He'd already found a comfortable position and everything. Probably never get situated spot-on like that, just the right angle, no pressure anywhere, Mird comfy beside him. Serve her good if every time she drifted off he pegged a stone at her, he grumbled to himself. Crossed his arms and his ankles. Let out a long-suffering breath and cut his eyes over at her.

She seethed. She was going to end up having a stroke. Damned if he could figure out what he'd done to set her off. She was normally wired, but what the actual kriff was that all about?

He let it go. Felt his arms get heavier and angled his head back in his bucket again. Blinked a couple times. Registered Mird sneaking back out and lying that heavy-boned head across his lap. Reached down to scritch that loop of fur around the delicate neck. Let this body relax.

Jumped when her voice broke his reverie again.

"What the hell is your problem? Either let me be or pack it up and we'll move on."

She turned so fast her hair whipped around like a blur of dark silk.

"If you're not going to sleep we might as well."

"If you'd ever shut your trap for ten consecutive minutes I could bed down for a while."

"I have never once seen you lay down and sleep," she bitched at him. "And I promise you, I've been silent for far longer than ten minutes."

He banged his head against the pack he'd propped on the wall. "For fek's sake. Is that your beef? That I'm sleeping sitting up?"

"I don't like that you won't reciprocate. I let you watch while I'm vulnerable, then you turn around and sit up so you can make sure I'm properly manning my post?"

The breath he let out was far from calming. Nor was his voice pitched to reassure her that he thought she was shaping up to be a fine partner.

"N'Dara. Sit your shebs down. Find something to do. And shut the kriff up for the next two hours unless there's a threat. An actual outside threat, like hostiles or predators or an act of nature. Not that you got your feelings hurt because I won't curl up in a ball with the blanket over my head and call you mommy."

"You are something else-"

"Look. I don't know what you've got in your pack, but mine isn't toting a pillow with a mint on it and a rosebud for the nightstand, so this is the compromise."

She stuck out her chin. "I don't have a pillow. If that's why you can't sleep… I… I have some cold-weather gear that you could wad up…"

He had to laugh. "I can't sleep flat in this weather. I can't breathe. My nose got broken a while back."

That had her stopping in her tracks. She narrowed her eyes.

"Who broke your nose?"

"Kal Skirata. The guy whose boys I keep sending shit to? One of the other training sergeants."

"I owe him a drink. He's my hero."

"He'd probably end up adopting you. He has a habit of adopting strays and misfits."

"I'm not a-"

His hands came together in supplication. "Please. Please. Please shut up."

"Take off your helmet."

"I'm not letting you break my nose."

That made her laugh. "I was going to see if I could reduce the inflammation any."

"It was a long time ago. Years. The swelling's long gone."

"Fine. Suffer."

He sighed. He wouldn't put it past her to pull out some cookbook of witchery and hex-craft and lay some spell of ingrown toenails and split ends on him. Reluctantly he reached up and popped his bucket.

She looked over, surprised again.

Bent and got her med kit out of her bag and came to kneel beside him.

"How could you trust me at the battery, tell me the things you've told me, and not just tell me that you're suffering? What's the benefit of doing the guy-thing like this?" she asked him.

"I've slept propped up for years when my sinuses act up," he explained. "I knew good docs. I just didn't get the break set right when it happened. Humidity chokes me up. It's one of the reasons I keep my bucket on. I'm not spying on you, I just get used to wearing the whole thing."

She rubbed something between her palms. He felt the cooling ointment the moment the heel of her hands ran down both sides of the bridge of his nose, then spread over his cheekbones. He closed his eyes. Just concentrated on breathing, not really expecting her to achieve miracles.

It sure felt good as fek, though, the way her thumbs came up and massaged the space between his brows. Arched up and around them, pressing all the tension out of his forehead. She pressed her fingertips up into his hairline, then pushed up from the backs of both ears before cupping her hands around them so all he could hear was the ocean pounding back from his heartbeat. The backs of her thumbs pressed on either side of the broken arch. Held steady for a long moment. She used them to stretch the skin over his cheeks taunt. The sensation of the hard knuckles dragging over his over-heated sinuses was incredibly cathartic. It was like all the tension in his head dissipated. The muscles he usually held rigid in his jaw, the way his spine and the base of his skull stayed taut, it just all melted away.

"Oh my gods," he moaned without opening his eyes.

"Want me to do your shoulder?" she asked softly.

He didn't even bother asking how she knew his shoulder was killing him. He just nodded and immediately started shucking the plates on that arm so he could unzip his kute.

"Just take it off," she ordered. "Roll here, to your side."

She patted and shifted away from him. Mird curled up against his naked back when he did as she requested.

He fell asleep with his head pillowed on one arm and the woman's fricking magic hands tugging every tendon in his chest and back into alignment. He'd never had anyone massage the back of his scalp before, but when he woke up her strong fingers were doing just that. Mird had been replaced and he barely turned his head before opening his eyes. Sighing.

There were worse ways to wake up.

"Shh," she ordered. "I am so not in the mood for your bullshit right now."

That made him chuckle. He rolled, curling up and around again.

"What did you do with my strill?"

"He's sniffing around. I offered to trim his whiskers and he took offense."

"He's an it. Hermaphroditic. Might be feeling female today. Sometimes they're touchy."

She poked him. "What the hell is this bruise from?"

"You shot me."

There was an actual pop as her lips fell apart.

"Point-blank, you shot me. Hurt like hell. You're lucky I haven't shot you back."

"Why didn't you tell me!?"
"You were there."

"I didn't know I'd hurt you."

"Okay. Well. Write this down: if you pull a trigger and send a bolt of hot energy into someone, even someone wearing armor, it smarts."

"Next time I'm aiming for your mouth."

"Like you should talk."

She twisted her lips. Narrowed her eyes. Laid her hand over the bruise. He could feel her drawing out the tension in the muscles, the thickness of the hematoma.

"You have the palest skin I've ever seen," she told him. "Like, white white."

"Just when we're getting along you come out and insult my ivory complexion," he complained sleepily.

"White white white. Like translucent. You might be related to vampires."

"There are those who suggest that my origins are suspect."

"When people call you a bastard… that's not what they mean, lily."

That made him chuckle. He didn't bother opening his eyes to defend himself. "I lived on an island where it rained all day every day for ten years. And before that I was Mandalorian for twenty-some-odd years. The only place I take off my armor is the bathtub or a plainclothes op. Even on Dorumaa I didn't get any sun. Of course, we spent most of that trip underwater…"

"Fascinating."

"I imagine there are parts of me that haven't seen daylight since I was a babe splashing at the beach, if then."

"Hmph."

"Find a lot of time to sunbathe in the service of the glorious Republic Navy, there, milk-skin?" he asked, rolling to his back and poking her. "You're no better than me. You're always covered. Head-to-toe."

"Well, forgive me for not parading around the rainforest in a flippy skirt and sandals, waiting for every bug on Kashyyk to swarm in for a taste."

He laughed. "Have you ever been to a beach?"

"I have. The tourist traps are overrated. I liked sand, though. Liked the quiet and the way the water never stops moving."

"I can't move. Whatever you did to me, I can find absolutely no motivation to get up and break camp."

"We could use a break, Vau," she complained. "Nobody would know if we spent the night here instead of moving on after moonrise."

He liked to hunker down during the hottest part of the day, then hike as long as they had the light. They both had NV capacity, he had infrared, Mird was a natural alert system, and she had a healthy array of early-warning detection herself. He saw no reason to waste time.

"I am going to break form and say you're right. On this one thing. Just this once."
She looked like a child, the way she threw both fists up and squealed.

"If whoever lives in this cave comes back we are fekked," he told her.

"I can take 'em," she promised, leaning down to smack a loud kiss to his brow.

"Fine," he sighed, closing his eyes again. He didn't even notice that he fell asleep completely flat. Nary a snort or snore or sniff.

She'd never seen him sleep so long or so deeply. Mird wandered in and she crouched, whispered to the strill.

"Oya!" he vaguely registered her murmuring before she abandoned him to his dreams.

.

.o0o.

.

"Who taught you to camp?" she asked him later as he cleaned the knife he'd used to section the fruit she and Mird had gathered while he rested.

"This is basic survival stuff, sugar lips," he told her.

She'd discovered some kind of pear-type thing with inedible skin that tasted like frozen custard. It was gritty and full of miniscule seeds but she loved it.

She gestured to the small flame where he'd suspended his metal vessel. He wanted some shiig, of all things. As long as they were hunkering down here for the whole of the night, he wanted a cuppa and something sweet and crunchy. He'd dug out his reserve rations, found a pack of cookies.

Mird was gnawing a bone that looked to be something big. Like Bantha-big. Long dead, but the strill happily crunched it apart and noisily sucked the marrow.

"I have a pot you could have used to heat water."

"This was already out. And it won't hurt it. Tomorrow you can show off your skill with a kettle. We'll see whose tea is better."

"You're not good at answering questions."

"Pot. Kettle. So black, sugar lips. So black."

"That one's worse than doll face. Let's show a little respect here, Lily."

He just glared over at her from under his lashes.

"I don't remember, exactly, who taught what when. I was exiled from my homeworld when I was fifteen. I believe it was intended that I would remain a bit closer. A fair number of those excommunicated by the Imperius were simply sat upon an island and expected to make do with a lesser expectation of their new station."

"I hate when you talk like that."

"What?" he asked sarcastically. "You wanted my story, didn't you?"

"Not the way you speak it, when you speak that way," she told him. "We all have a past. You don't get bonus points for acting like you're above yours. Just tell me. Or don't. But don't drag it over your vocal cords that way."

He stopped. Considered.

"Would you believe me if I told you I didn't realize I was doing it?"

The slim shoulder lifted. She threw the rind up and over the outcropping that formed their little cave. She was good at finding these types of places. Just… popping over a hillock and then beckoning him to have a look.

When she came back from splashing her hands he poured some of the tea into the lid of her canteen. Pulled out his own mug and frowned into it.

"I left home when I was exiled. I was fifteen. I travelled around. A lot. Got hooked up with some people who saw that I needed a creed. Needed to be saved. Eventually a man named Anash Stone adopted me." He laughed. Looked at the back wall of the cave, then over toward Mird. "I was twenty-two. He told me it was time to decide whether I wanted to be an apprentice or a man's son. Made me bend over so he could put his hand on my head when he spoke the words. I'm tall… he was so short," he laughed. "He… he couldn't reach the top of my head. So he just flicked his fingers at me. He had this way of doing it, when I'd screwed something up. He'd beckon me down like he wanted to whispered something, then whack me on the side of the head with his knuckles."

She watched him blink.

"He sounds like he had a sense of humor."

"He did. He was one hell of a strict task-master. Brutal when it came down to the nitty gritty. I adored him. I could have taken his name. A lot of men do, when they're adopted. But he told me that I needed to keep mine. That a name like mine… I could make something of it beyond what it meant to the man who sired me. I could claim it as my own and live under it the way I should have been all along. Not as a yoke but as a banner."

"I like that."

"He died. I don't think he'd even gotten to tell his wife what he'd done. We were walking back across the field—we'd gone down to a stream to fill a kettle, ironically enough—and basically tripped all over the scouts of a force who'd been tracking us with the intent to attack before we could the next day. We weren't even wearing our buckets. Neither of us. I never found her body. It's not the Mando way, but I'd have liked to laid them to rest together."

"She was taken?"

He shook his head. "The attack was catastrophic. We'd had a couple of depots set up, big guns and ordnance kept separate. When they hit they hit those first. There was no chance of recognizing anyone who'd been in that part of the camp. And the fire just swept from tent to tent. It was late summer. Dry as fek. Even the advance forces probably lost as many to the smoke and flame as we did."

"Why didn't you die?"

He lifted his brows. "I wasn't meant to. Trite, right? Another old guy… Jaig… a friend of ours… that's what he told me. He said when just one man walks away from a skirmish, when just one man survives an attack or a crash or any kind of catastrophe… that it's just not his time yet and no action or reaction could have changed things, could bring about a course that changed the fact that that man was supposed to still be there when everyone else was gone."

He dug deeper.

Pulled out a cloth-wrapped bottle. Trickled a good measure into his tea. Offered to do hers, which she accepted. He took a long pull from it before recapping it. Just rewrapped it and buried it in his pack and went back to fine-tuning his gear like he hadn't just confessed the most painful experience of his life.

The next morning he shook her awake early and set a brutal pace.

They made the peak the morning after. Took their time working their way in.

Vau just gaped at the extent of what had been left behind when the Republic pulled out and left the Wookies to fend for themselves. No one had even bothered to come in and tank the system. It booted right up.

N'Dara watched thirstily as he keyed in commands. Nobody in the Empire must care that it was just sitting here: the controls to the satellite overhead, the data dump of every observation point erected by the GAR during their campaigns here, the comm records and encryption codes, the tele-radio capabilities themselves. His hand hesitated over the control. Flicked it back and forth.

"Wait," she told him. She sensed a wave of rashness rising in him. "Watch first. Then copy. A set for you, a set for me. Then let's see who we can raise."

He swallowed hard. Handed her a set of data chips. "Copy. Can you do it?"

The look she gave him would have withered most men. No, he didn't imagine she had any trouble getting cooperation or leveraging her control in either the bursar's office or in whatever tactical support group she'd been attached to later in her career.

She typed for a living, she'd told him.

Now he was going to teach her to deal death to those who deserved it most.

Not that the navy hadn't trained each of their initiates in basic defenses. Plus the jedi did a passable job, if Etain and Jusik could be held as testimony. Still… there was a difference in marking a body for killing and seeking them out to fulfill their destiny.

He checked his wrist unit. Scrolled through a list of data exchanges. Found the one he wanted. Pulled up the map of available cams and droid probes. Chose the one that seemed most likely. Almost immediately closed it and chose a different one. Tapped again and the image reversed.

"That's where I was."

Her voice was hard. Like it was stuck in her throat.

He nodded. Hesitated before typing the command that would enlarge the image to fill the available screens. He was interested in details, not in multiple views.

There was no sound. It was disconcerting, eerie, to be sitting in front of her in this dusty, oven-hot permacrete tube drilled into the side of a fairly primitive world, and watch the flickering green images. He watched the battle progress. Saw when they had it. Saw when they lost it. When the med-evac was called off. Thought he saw her at the edge of the screen—just something different about the way the blaster bolts looked as they winged across. They all looked the same. A pale, almost white against the grainy images.

He recognized the moment that the troops knew they were screwed. There's an abandon about the way a man fights, when he realizes that his only remaining choice is to take as many of them with him, because no one's coming to help. Yeah. He'd been right. There was her lightsaber, bashing bolts back into oncoming troops. Until it stopped. He couldn't see what had happened. The angle was wrong. He could see the men just swarmed. Geonosians, maybe. Certainly the same type of exoskeleton. Although he didn't remember hearing about them just rolling over troopers there. Wondered if it had been hot. That many beating wings, all that sticky cartilage. The spines on their legs and arms and the sound of those beating wings. It would have been terrifying. Overwhelming.

Not that their armor wouldn't have helped. Still. Jesu.

He could see her now. Absolutely crawling with them. Dragging herself out of a mass of them by digging her hands through the dirt. Whatever her goal was, she didn't reach it. She seemed to reach out. Push, instead of pull. He'd seen it. Seen doors blown open with a similar motion.

"What were you trying to get to?"

"A Larty went down." There was no emotion in her voice. "I could hear them screaming. Over everything else. I could hear them screaming."

Troopers were ripped apart. Wookies did that. Pulled their victims limb-from-limb. The bugs must have been paying attention. Paying them back.

He'd never expected to see a battlefield where Nikto and Trandos had to be the voice of reason, rounding up survivors.

"I imagine there was a dollar to be made there," he murmured. "They needed some hostages."

"I imagine they did. We became worthless before the night was over."

"Pissed them off some."

"I imagine it did."

"I owe you an apology."

"Why?"

He reached for her hand. Drew it over his shoulder. Traced the lines of whatever had shredded her hand that left the skin so scarred you could hardly even tell what texture was under it. Laid his lips to it.

"I disbelieved you. Forgive me?"

She sucked in a deep breath. "Of course."

"In Mando I would kneel before you, say ni ceta."

"What does that mean?"

"It is the most sincere form of apology our race knows. A formal acknowledgement of our wrongdoing and a begging for forgiveness that few men can swallow uttering." He heard her swallow behind him.

"What is the word for I accept your apology?"

"There isn't one," he told her. "If you exonerate me, you might say kih'parjai. Or naas. If I were you… Nar'sheb. Usenye, Osi'yaim."

"I don't know what that means."

"I do," he told her. Squeezed her hand so hard the bones hurt before he released it.

He reached again for the control. Brought up the map of the surrounding area. Chose another cam to try. Watched as the men he loved ran for the battery, full of vim and vigor. Three came out. Were free to run out. He couldn't find the angle he wanted. He'd come all this way and all he had to go on was a jedi's sense that Sev had been alive for a while after he'd been overrun. That he'd been counting down bugs. He still didn't have proof that this wasn't a fool's errand.

He watched it again, zooming in differently. Watching the horizon for long minutes after the time clock indicated that Delta was gone. Flinched at the flashes that lit up the screen. Rewound it. Zoomed in again.

His fist hit the control panel.

Just that one act of frustration and he was a whorl of calm and rock-solid steadiness in the force again.

He wound it back. Watched it again.

Vaguely he was aware of her working behind him. Heard her open and close a case.

"This sucks."

"So very badly," he agreed. He glanced over his shoulder. "If you're going to keep working with me, we need to synchronize some kit. Nobody teaches the navy basic hand signals?"

"The navy? Where in all of space do you think I'm going to be able to wave my fingers and dock a star cruiser?"

He lifted his two middle fingers in a hand signal that needed no translation.

Rewound the time clock and tried a different tact, zooming out as far as he could.

"You need at least a bead so I can talk to you. A visor that has some of the same capabilities as my HUD. And some fekking armor. The plates aren't going to be enough."

"I can appreciate that. I'm not going whole-Mando. I told you I tried it… it's not comfortable."

"It grows on you."

"Sweet cheeks, you've been wearing that armor so long it smells like there's things growing in there with you."

He laughed. "You keep making me take off my bucket."

"What are the other two locations?" she asked, bringing up the holochart Enacca had marked.

He overlaid it with the map of GAR resources. No match.

He looked up at her. "You got my datachips?"

She handed them over. Watched him toss them up and down in his palm.

"I need to get to my ship to transmit this much."

"Call him," she told him.

His brows went up.

"Call him. If he's anywhere near… let's bust through every receiver left on this planet. Boost it so it goes out on the satellite. Record it and set it to play on a loop. Blast it into every headset, earpiece, handset, and radio wave. Broadcast through their wireless transistors. Let him know you're coming."

He licked his lips. Leaned forward. Toggled that switch and flipped the one that turned the mic live. Cleared his throat. His own HUD crackled.

"Sev. RC-1207. Sev… This is Sergeant Vau, son." He glanced up at her. She nodded. "Don't give up on me yet, Commando. I'm here and I'm making my way to you. We're going to find you and we're going to bring you home. You hear me, Commando? You wait for me to come get you, Sev. You weren't abandoned. We're still coming. You just hold on for me, son. You hold on until I get there."

He flipped a button. Studied something. Reached for the touchscreen and started sliding bars over. His own comm'link squeaked, then squealed and died. Hers popped. Split wide open.

"Ooops," she murmured. Dropped her wrist unit on the desktop and rubbed the skin.

Mird screeched and yawned, his jaw popping.

"Fek. Now we really do need to make tracks for my ship."

"I can't believe we're hauling our asses all over this damned planet and you've got a ship somewhere."

"You understand the whole concept of stealth, right?"

"How do you say you're insufferable in your little bouncing tongue there?"

"You can tell everyone you know that you met the man of your dreams: tall, dark, majestic, and paklalat."

"Payck-luh-layt. That's the word you want me to use to describe you?"

"Doll, I'm not sure that was a word in any language. PAHK. Lah. LAHT."

"Get your ass out of that chair before every Trando and Bug on Kashyyk gets here to cut your little radio show short."

He slapped her cheek as he complied. Jerked his duffel up and onto his shoulders and started climbing hand over hand. Mird took a running leap and launched himself, clawing his way to perch on Vau's shoulders. It made her laugh, the way the creature bent his neck to lick toes right about where Vau's ear should be. She lost the breath for laughter long before they got to the top. The man was a beast. He had to be closing in on twice her age, but he just kept chugging.