"Check this out!" He looked over at her when she blew out an exaggerated huff of breath. Grinned over at him. "I'm better than a Katarn Dragon."
He had to smile. "How did I get stuck with you as a partner?"
"I know it's really just thermal reaction. It's funny, though, to be able to see myself breathe. It's cold as fuck."
"I may just stay in this blanket," he agreed with a yawn.
"I have to pee," she told him. "But there's frost on the ground."
He snorted before he could help himself. "Have fun with that one. Do not play in the yellow steam."
She frowned over at him. "I tried to get Mird to go out first so I could just tiptoe in his paw prints."
He frowned and rolled back over. Threw back his head and laughed. "I want to see that!"
Her fist hit his shoulder bell. "I should have just used your boo-sey bucket as a chamber pot before I woke you up."
"That's one way to die," he said blandly.
"What am I going to do?"
He gestured. "The same thing you do every morning, N'Dara. Go outside, find a place that suits you, and drop trou."
"I'll leave tracks, though. The frost shows were you've been."
The erudite brow creased. "Yeah. It's going to be cold, but not that much colder than in here. You'll be fine."
"How do I cover my tracks up?"
"They'll burn off, Cinyc Daryc'ika. It's no big deal."
Her eyes went wide. "It'll burn off?"
"Melt," he corrected. He rolled toward her. "You're acting like you've never walked through frost before."
"It's not as thick as snow."
"It's not, praise every god that these people worshipped, we shouldn't have to deal with snow."
He watched her look out again. She narrowed her eyes and took a runner's stance. Leapt for a rock and scampered in long force-leaps across the space. He shook his head, wondering what the hell her malfunction was, and hauled himself out of bed.
He was still watering the tree he'd chosen when she came back. He glanced over his shoulder at her cry of dismay.
"You left tracks everywhere!"
"It's not some sacred temple. It's just frost."
"You're so psycho about us not leaving any trace and then you…" She cut short her diatribe with a high-pitched shriek. Sometimes he was sorry she'd fixed his nose and sinuses. He couldn't help but think the sound she'd emitted could have used some buffering.
He finished up, tucked himself away, and turned, still putting himself back together.
Purposefully took a longer route around, marring the ground with more bootprints.
Suddenly he felt bad.
"Did you want to take a picture of it before we messed it up? We can hike back up to that other clearing if you want."
She stared up at him like he was insane.
"You're going to have to help me out with this one, sweetness. I am at a loss."
"Why don't you care that you're leaving obvious signs that we camped here?"
"Because in an hour the sun'll be good and up and nobody will see them."
She frowned. "In an hour?"
He lifted one shoulder and made a face. "I mean, don't count the seconds but probably close."
"All this is just going to go away in an hour?"
Their breath mingled as they stood talking.
"Have you honestly never trekked through frost before?"
She bit that bottom lip of hers and shook her head.
"It's not a big deal. It's just temporary. We'll probably have it most mornings for a while. There won't be any under the tent—our body heat keeps it from forming, although if it gets a lot colder we might get some on the tent. But as soon as the sun comes up it's gone. Not just where we crushed it, but everywhere. It's not like snow, where it takes days and weeks to melt."
Her mouth formed a little O and he wanted to kiss her so badly that he nearly rocked forward to nip at that lip of hers.
"I thought…"
"Obviously. It's okay to touch it." He opened his mouth. Breathed out a hard cloud of vapor. Walked away grinning so hard his cheeks felt tight. Imagine having been everywhere she'd been and never touching frost before. It made him chuckle as he made to break camp. Mird wasn't thrilled to be scooted off his bedroll and out of the tent, but they had miles to go today. No time to lay around. He repacked his rucksack and watched her reach down and run her fingertip over the ice-dusted groundcover. She smiled over at the strill who stretched and came capering over to her.
They got along. He was thinking about leaving Mird with her when they got done. She needed a kriffing keeper and the animal was just as protective of her as it was of him. He watched them dance and play. She brought that side out in Mird where he never had. They pretended to pounce at each other, the long gold tail whipping the ground. The delighted battle sounds each of them made carried over the landscape, but no one listening would think those fake dying noises she made were human. She actually had a good ear and tongue for replicating bird and animal voices—just that terrible accent when she spoke!
"Come on, now," he called. "Breakfast and break it!"
She jogged over and knelt beside her pack. He watched her pull two cases to the top. He recognized one of them as her holo-imager. She glanced over at him.
"I'm making real food today if Mird or I find something we can take down. I can bury or pack out every single speck of evidence."
"Fine," he sighed. He could appreciate the idea of a hot meal. Anything other than jerky and nuts and fruit and the blasted harshuun bread. "Just make sure you plan on stirring your soup pot with your lightsaber. As clear as the sky is today smoke will show for miles."
She sniffed thoughtfully. Set her jaw sideways.
"Do you think that would work? If we took something and I carved off slices carefully, would it sear the meat enough to eat it without cooking it?"
"Having never been a laser jockey, I couldn't tell you. Shift it, duryc murcyur."
She bounced along behind him making more noise than he'd imagine possible for a woman her size. Finally he couldn't take it anymore.
"What the kriff are you doing!?" he snapped, turning around.
She was stomping as hard as she could with every footfall. It was driving him crazy.
The woman just waved her arm behind them like a tour guide on the where-are-your-hidden-tunnels express. "Look. You can see mine better than yours."
He was going to kill her. He hated it, too, because he really liked her. But he was going to have to pitch her off the side of the mountain.
"This is why Jango ripped the jetiise apart with his bare hands at Galidraan," he told her.
"I have no knowledge of this."
"You wouldn't. But your people nearly wiped out my people and then they sold my Mand'Alor into slavery after he killed you all with his bare hands."
"I feel like your perspective is skewed."
"Jango was the only one to survive. A contingent of jedi massacred an entire company of Mando—on bad information and without giving quarter—and when Jango Fett got there he returned the favor."
"No wonder they decided to clone him."
"Yeah. Agreed. What did you know about Lord Tyrannus?"
She shook her head in confusion. "Nothing."
"Master Tyrannus?" he tried, correcting himself.
"I don't know anyone by that name. He was the one who killed Jango Fett?"
"No. That was Windu. I'm sorry I never had opportunity to top the man myself for it."
"When we find Sev I want to look for Boba," she told him.
This was why he kept her around. "N'Dara. He's not going to take kindly to a jedi hunting him, even if you long-ago decried your connection to the Order."
"Maybe I will get some of your beskar'gam so I look like a familiar face to him. He's a kid and he's alone."
"He'd be damn near the same age I was when I left home by now. And… for the love of all things holy and sacred, don't say beskar'gam like you're holding a handful of marbles in your mouth."
"You make that shhh-chuh noise all the time when you talk."
"Cinyc daryc'ika, yes. Beskar'gam… all hard sounds."
"I forget because you switch back and forth." She huffed indignantly. "Do you know there's not a single book or guide that I could find about Irmenui language instruction?"
He nearly laughed out loud. Cleared his throat. "Hm. I'll see what I can dig up for you."
When he glanced behind him again she had her holo-imager out. Captured the sight of the matching sets of bootprints all the way up the trail.
"Look," he murmured. Pointed. "When we come out into the sun it'll be melted back into dew."
He waited while she lined up that shot, too. Had to admit it was a good one when she showed him that night. She'd caught the prismatic rainbow shining across a single drop of dew at the edge of a leaf. You could almost feel the stillness around them when you looked at that image. Feel the slide from freeze to thaw and know how cold that moisture would be on your fingertips for the single second you could hold it before it dissolved into nothing.
"You could make a fortune publishing this as art," he hummed at her weeks later. "I'd love to see what you'd make of my world. It's got everything—lakes and mountains and desert and grassland. Animals they don't have anywhere else. And the markets? We're more primitive than Coruscant. The lines of shops and stores?" He shook his head. "It's nothing like an open market. Stalls where the same family has been setting up for eons. Selling their special recipe of cheese right next to what they swear is cleaning oil so good you never need to sharpen your blades again."
She smiled down at where he was reclining on one arm as they flipped through the photos she'd taken that day.
"That's what I miss," she decided. "Cheese."
"Me, too," he agreed. "I just realized it."
The Wookies didn't have pack animals. No refrigeration system meant their stores were of the dried or smoked variety. They didn't have harsh winters in this system so their bounty barely dried up—something could always be hunted or fresh fruit foraged for a meal. Some planets in the sector were a little more extreme, but Trando and Wook-folk alike lived off the land and that land wasn't really suited for raising any beasts that gave milk.
"What would you order if you could go to any restaurant in any galaxy right now?" he asked her.
She popped those bubblegum lips of hers and didn't even think about it.
"There was a casserole they make on Coruscant. I know it's common because I had it at the temple and every single posting I ever served. Some kind of nuna with short noodles in cream sauce."
He laughed. "You can take the girl out of the navy, but can't take the navy out of the girl! You like feed-the-masses food?"
She nodded.
"I like spicy food. Something with so much flavor your eyes already water from it before the fork gets in your mouth. Not just hot for the sake of searing your tastebuds… heturam. I like a sharal skraan'ikase, too. Just little bites of all your favorites, everyone making something a little special and setting them out and spending hours just eating and drinking, enjoying every single flavor of every single bite."
"You shouldn't be a mercenary," she told him. "You're too refined."
"I like what I do."
"Why?"
He shrugged. "I'm not a nice man, talyc meshurok. I enjoy the physicality of besting a foe. I enjoy the mental part of it, too, the planning and outsmarting. I quite enjoyed Zey when he took over SO. I have to admit that I detested your General Camas."
"So did I. He meant well. But we didn't rub on."
"Want me to take you to Ilum so you can complete your trials and unbind your braid? We could be there in…" He checked his wrist-chrono. "Thirteen and a half hours, so before dinner tomorrow. I'll wait in the ship while you play in the snow."
She shoved at him. "Go to sleep," she told him. "You're delirious. And I learned to cut my own braid a long time ago."
He nodded. Reached up to tug at her hair. "It's better this way, I think."
"Infinitely. I meant to have it styled while I was at Myyydril. It's gotten so heavy again."
He ran his hand through his own. Nodded. "I'm well overdue a trim as well."
It took everything in him not to purr when she echoed the trail of his fingers, her nails scraping lightly along his scalp.
"I like it longer. It's still so dark. Just these white blazes. Is it all aristocrats who grey this way, so orderly and refined?"
His brows lifted in question.
"Every Moff I ever met had the same exact pattern, pure white either just above their ears or starting at their temples."
"Do not compare my unsullied bloodline with your Moffs," he growled.
"My pardon! I should never suggest such a thing."
He closed his eyes and shifted to lay so that his head was cradled on her crossed legs.
"Make it up to me. Don't stop."
She laughed softly as she complied. She'd never met a man so thirsty for physical contact and too stubbornly masculine to realize it. He loved having his hair brushed or stroked. His scalp and face massaged.
"If I could draw I'd do you in rough charcoals," she murmured to him. Ran those delicious fingertips lightly down his repaired nose. "Your features are so square. Like nobody ever came back and finished rounding them off."
He almost reached out and brushed her wrist with his mouth when she ran her thumb over his bottom lip. He wondered what she'd do if he pressed his face into her palm and tasted her. If he pulled her down and showed her how a man truly loved a woman—not these fast encounters she'd had with freight jockeys and loadsmen when she went off to do whatever she did when they waited for the next lead.
For a jedi she couldn't be very perceptive if she couldn't sense how badly he wanted her. Or, more likely, she was acutely aware of the sensations she wrought in him and simply chose to ignore them. He knew that there were many out there with more to offer—looks, charm, youth.
"Do you look like your mother or your father?"
"My father," he murmured. She could lull him to sleep faster than he'd ever succumbed in his life. He'd slept as long as four or five hours sometimes while she watched, which was unheard of for him when usually just a couple, three tops, sufficed. "You?"
"I wouldn't know," she whispered back. "I like to think I look like my father, but that's just homesickness for a people I never knew."
"Do you want me to see if anyone can find out? The jedi kept records, I believe, of where initiates came from. And, sweet jesu, there couldn't be that many beings out there with that name of yours."
"N'Dara Jouselle Pek-Marring'tionne."
"Yeah. What you said."
"I thought Jaing said I was on the detain list."
"You are."
"So I think wandering through the planetary guide looking up the Jouselle family tree would be a bad idea."
"Why would it be the Jouselle family tree? Why not the Pack-Mare-whatever mess?"
"Why would I be interested in Daveed's family?"
He shifted, looked up at her. She just blinked.
"Um. What?"
"Daveed?"
"Yeah. There's no reason to investigate his side. Right? If we were interested in my lineage we'd do my maiden name."
"You're married?"
"Briefly."
"To a human."
"I'm actually human, Vau. We've discussed this."
"I didn't realize you were married."
"I don't suppose it's come up. It only lasted for about ten seconds. It was… educational. For both of us."
"But you kept his name."
She lifted a shoulder. "It was a pain in the ass to change it. I just never went through the hassle of changing it back once the divorce decree came through. With both of us on different stations it took an act of congress. Then the war started and I just… I was used to it. All my service records are under Pek-Marring'tionne. That's what everybody knew me as. Why is this a big deal?"
"It's not," he decided. Laid himself back down. Shifted to reangle his weight on his shoulder. "It just took me by surprise. You never talk about him. Daveed."
"We were young and stupid. Got along well when his unit was tasked to us. Thought we were meant to be matched. Realized our mistake once we were reassigned together. Absence, fondness, you know the tale…"
"I've never been married. Never been close. I like my own company too much I suppose." He kept his eyes closed and his tone light.
She tapped his nose. "You think so but I know that's not true. You adore me. You said so."
"I was probably trying to see if I could get in your pants."
That made her laugh. "I'd need a can opener to get you out of yours."
"Do you have a picture of him?"
"No. I lost most of what I kept. The only thing I took back was my lightsaber. It didn't even occur to me to look for my pack when I ran."
"I wasn't thinking," he apologized.
He felt her shrug as she moved to lie down on the bedrolls. They'd started sleeping next to each other as the night temps dropped. Most of the time Mird took the spot of honor and snuggled right between them. He glanced over and saw her tap her data'pad. Approved that she opened a tab with the sensors he'd placed first, then opened her book. She'd come a long way.
"Does he know?"
"That I was a padawan? Honestly, I don't know. I think he must know I was force-sensitive. Or at least some kind of religious. With the meditation, yeah?"
"I meant that you came back, that you-"
"He's one of the contacts I tap when I run out of resources. He's still in."
"That's dangerous."
"I really don't think my ex-husband is going to turn me over to the Imperialists. Or the Seps. Rebels. They're calling them all rebels now."
Walon laid back. Thought about that. For whatever reason, it was hard to think of her as being old enough to have a past. With a husband in it. He thought of her as innocent. Thought of her as wounded, he admitted to himself.
"Children?"
"Thankfully not. We thought we wanted them. I think I might be infertile. That or we were incompatible."
"He's human?"
"I'm human, too, Vau!" she laughed. "I promise you, I'm every bit as human as you and Daveed and the troopers and-"
She pretended to snap her teeth at his hand when he lightly danced the pads of his fingertips over her cheekbones. The sun pulled out even more of the blue marks.
"Surely to heavens you've run up against other beings with freckles in all your fifty years."
"Fifty…" He flipped his wrist and tapped the calendar on his chrono-unit. "Three."
She just looked over at him. "Fifty-three?"
"As of yesterday."
She rolled her eyes. "Yesterday was your birthday and you wouldn't even let me roast a bird?"
"Sue me."
He settled back down with a satisfied smirk on his face. He couldn't say why needling her put him in a good mood.
"When's yours?"
She leaned over to look at the still-glowing image. "Two more weeks. You're still senior to me."
That kind of logic killed him. The anniversary of his birth was two weeks ahead of hers, so that's what gave him the edge of seniority? Not the twenty-year difference in those blessed events? She'd insisted they figure up time-in-grade, too. Like he wasn't going to have her beat there hands down.
"You are so bizarre," he hummed.
"I know. It's part of my charm."
He curled his arm around her when she snuggled closer and propped her holo-book on his chest. He'd taken to removing his chest and arm plates when they settled in. She'd complained that she or Mird were going to end up frozen to him when she shoved him away with her bare hand one morning.
It was no sacrifice to lie there and doze while she finished the story they were sharing and Mird padded around outside. She didn't like the cold. She, who liked everything else, had determined after nearly thirty-three years, that cold weather wasn't to her liking. It baffled.