Private A Hand in Common

[Seo Linn]

Seo had faced Sith, slavers, criminals, and more than a few people who had wanted her dead over the years. Somehow, deciding what to wear to dinner had proven unexpectedly troublesome.

She stood in her quarters on Veradune looking down at the clothes she had laid across the end of her bed, mildly annoyed with herself for giving the matter as much consideration as she had. Dalvos had promised her dinner during their first meeting aboard the Copper Rose, back when he had possessed a hole through his thigh and enough stimulants in his system to make remaining conscious seem like a reasonable decision. At the festival the previous evening, they had discovered rather conclusively that the attraction born during that strange first encounter had survived considerably better circumstances. Their first kiss had become a second, and Seo had gone back to her quarters afterward with absolutely no uncertainty about whether she wanted to see him again.

Dinner was different, though.

There would be no wounded refugees, damaged ships, bonfires, mysterious gifts, or crowds of Protectorate members around them. No convenient distraction whenever conversation wandered somewhere personal. Tonight was simply the dinner he had promised her, and Seo found herself looking forward to that more than she cared to disguise.

Eventually, she chose something simple. Seo had never possessed much patience for elaborate clothing, but neither did she intend to arrive dressed as though she had come directly from an investigation. The clothes she selected were comfortable and flattering without being formal, her very light blond hair left loose rather than secured for work. Her lightsaber remained behind. Veradune was one of the few places in the galaxy where doing so did not make some deeply ingrained part of her immediately object, and carrying a weapon to dinner with a man she had kissed the previous evening seemed unnecessary.

It was while checking herself one final time that another thought occurred to her.

She had never told Dalvos about the Dark Hand.

Seo went still for a moment before a faint expression of disbelief crossed her features. He had told her aboard the Rose that he had once belonged to the organization before moving into the Protectorate Intelligence Services. Seo had listened to him explain his past, his cover, and the complicated collection of identities he carried through different corners of the galaxy without once mentioning that the name meant considerably more to her than he realized.

In her defense, the man had been bleeding through his clothing at the time.

Still, Seo could not help wondering whether Dalvos had begun putting pieces together since then. She had hardly concealed that Veradune was familiar to her. Last night, when they parted after the festival, she had returned to her own quarters rather than arranging accommodations or transportation elsewhere. For an investigator himself, that should have been enough to raise at least a question or two. Whether he had reached the correct conclusion was another matter entirely.

The thought brought a quiet smile to her lips. Apparently, they still had a few surprises left for one another.

Seo left her quarters and made her way through Veradune at an unhurried pace. She knew these paths well enough that there was no need to consult directions, and the familiarity of the world around her only made the omission concerning her history increasingly amusing. She had not deliberately hidden anything from Dalvos. The opportunity simply hadn't presented itself, and Seo wasn't inclined to unload her entire past on someone during their first two meetings just because she found him attractive.

And she did find him attractive. There was little point in pretending otherwise after last night.

By the time Seo reached the place they had agreed to meet, anticipation had comfortably replaced whatever nerves she might have felt while preparing. She slowed as she approached, gold eyes searching ahead for the familiar platinum hair and white eyes that had become surprisingly easy to pick from a crowd. The prospect of seeing him again brought the same warmth she had felt when he appeared at the festival, and Seo made no effort to suppress the smile that accompanied it.

Perhaps tonight she would finally tell Dalvos that when he had confessed to being former Dark Hand, he had unknowingly been confessing it to someone who understood considerably better than he could have imagined.

Or perhaps she would wait and see how long it took the investigator to figure it out himself. Seo rather liked that option.

Dalvos Thrakan

 

[Dalvos Thrakan]

Securing the steaks had been easy; he already had a few tucked away, though they hadn't yet been dry rubbed the way he liked them. Putting the meeting off to the following night had worked in his favor: They had sat, dressed in the flavorful rub, through the night. Vegetables, fresh as could be here on Veradune, and a small container of stasis-fresh fat to top the steaks with. Long slivers of onions and peppers dressed with salt and pepper made a bright arrangement, lightly drizzled in oil and seared. A small mound of long-grained rice, topped with thin-cut pieces of pickled bantha (A personal favorite, if a bit of an acquired taste, and an even harder acquisition to purchase this far antispinward from Tattooine), set out next to the empty place upon the plate where the steaks would go. Thick-cut, well-marbled, with a searingly hot pan awaiting them. Everything was prepared. Almost everything. The sauce he drizzled over the bantha and rice had come out perfectly, thin but sticky, coating it in a lovely sheen of rich oil and fat. Everything was ready.

Everything except-

His eyes popped open wide and he spun the dial on the stove to turn it off, then turned and hustled to the door, taking a moment to hang up the apron that had been protecting his outfit from any mess. Layered silks in increasingly pale shades, the outer layer a blush pink, the innermost a dazzling crimson, creating a rustling array of colors as he moved. He half-leapt into the stairwell, bypassing the slower lifts, and taking the stairs two at a time.

He hit the button for the lifts as he passed them on the first floor, summoning one to be waiting, before skidding to a halt just inside the outer doors. He quickly checked himself, readjusting the slippery silks he wore so they flowed over each other like oil on water, brushed his hair back... and stepped outside. A quick, self-conscious check of the time showed he hadn't kept her waiting more than a minute or two.

Unless she had arrived early.

Quashing that errant thought, his eyes quickly sought out her own, and he spread his arms wide, the slashed front fluttering to reveal a haze of reds that set off his pale hair and eyes quite sharply. "Seo!" He called out, though surely she couldn't miss him if she was trying. "My apologies," he half-bowed to her, reaching up to swipe a bit of hair from his face where it stood out starkly against his tanned skin. "I was rather embroiled in preparation and lost track of time. I haven't kept you waiting long?" His tone was hopeful as he strode closer to her, his left hand gently seeking out her right to give it a gentle squeeze and a bright smile.

Seo Linn

 

[Seo Linn]

Seo's smile broadened the moment Dalvos came through the doors, particularly when she took in what he was wearing. Whatever hurried journey had brought him down from his apartment seemed to have left him slightly disheveled, although the effect did very little to diminish the impression created by the layered silks. Pale pink gave way to increasingly rich shades of red beneath it, framing his platinum hair and white eyes in a way that made Seo's gaze linger without apology.

After the previous evening, there seemed little reason to pretend she wasn't looking.

"You haven't kept me waiting," she assured him, amusement dancing openly through her gold eyes. "Although judging by that entrance, I suspect you were worried you had."

She accepted the hand that sought hers without hesitation, curling her fingers naturally around his and returning the gentle squeeze. It felt different tonight. At the festival, there had been a crowd around them, a bonfire nearby, and dozens of distractions competing for attention. Tonight, there was no ambiguity about why she was here. Dalvos had invited her to dinner; she had accepted because she wanted to spend time alone with him, and the kisses they had shared the previous night had removed whatever uncertainty might otherwise have existed between them.

Seo stepped closer and lifted herself just enough to press a brief kiss against his cheek in greeting. She lingered near him when she lowered herself again, her smile warm as she looked him over once more.

"You look very nice, by the way. I'm beginning to suspect you own more silk than I own clothing." Her eyes dropped briefly toward the flowing layers before returning to his face. "Although I'm certainly not complaining."

There was something rather endearing about the contrast between the care he had obviously put into his appearance and the fact that he had apparently forgotten the passage of time while preparing dinner. Seo could picture it rather easily after what she had already learned about him. Dalvos seemed capable of becoming completely absorbed in whatever held his attention at a particular moment, whether that happened to be an investigation, an endangered ship full of strangers, a conversation that wandered through six subjects in as many minutes, or apparently cooking dinner for her.

"I'm glad you asked me to come," she added, her voice softening slightly. Her thumb brushed lightly across the back of his hand. "I am looking forward to tonight."

She allowed him to guide her inside, remaining comfortably beside him as they crossed the lobby toward the lift he had already summoned. Seo's gaze traveled briefly around the building as they went, though not because she needed to orient herself on Veradune. That remained the quietly amusing part of tonight. Dalvos had given her an address, and she had simply appeared there without ever explaining how familiar she was with the world around them.

She still had not told him about the Dark Hand.

Perhaps he had noticed something already. He was an investigator, after all, and her returning to her own quarters after the festival rather than finding somewhere to stay should have provided at least one clue that she was more than an occasional visitor. Then again, Dalvos had been somewhat distracted when they parted the previous evening.

Seo couldn't entirely fault him for that.

The lift carried them upward, and only as they drew nearer to his apartment did the first traces of dinner begin to reach her. Seo breathed in quietly, catching the richer scent of something seared beneath spices and vegetables. Her eyebrows rose slightly before she turned her attention toward Dalvos.

"So that's what had you embroiled."

The teasing in her voice was gentle. Once they reached his door and the fuller aroma of dinner wafted out, her expression shifted from amusement to genuine appreciation. He had clearly done considerably more than throw something together before she arrived.

"When you promised me steak aboard the Rose, I wasn't expecting quite this much preparation." Seo gave his hand another small squeeze before looking back at him. "I would have been perfectly happy with dinner and your company."

A hint of playfulness returned to her smile.

"Though I have been wondering whether that steak you spent half our first meeting advertising is actually as good as you promised."

Dalvos Thrakan

 

[Dalvos Thrakan]

The lift chimed and Dalvos held the door with a little more flourish than dignity required, silks whispering as he stepped aside for her. Color climbed his cheeks the moment her comment about the silk settled fully into place. He tried, with limited success, to compose his face into something resembling a man who had planned this evening rather than sprinted down three flights of stairs in expensive fabric.

"That," he said, ushering her into the short hall, "is either a compliment or an inventory assessment. Either way—" he keyed the lock, the door sliding open on a wash of spice and seared fat "—I can procure more, if you ever decide standard polytextiles have done you a personal injury. It's hard to go back once you've gotten used to the good stuff. Corellian river-silk, Onderonian mothweave, even a bolt of that ridiculous iridescent stuff they dye on Zeltros if you want something that argues with the lighting." He waggled his eyebrows, as if 'arguing with the lightning' was a positive quality not to be underestimated. The blush did not recede. He smiled through it anyway, bright and a little helpless, and offered his hand again as if the apartment itself required an introduction.

The space beyond was not large. It was spacious, but it was full.

A low table of dark lacquered wroshyr sat beneath a hanging lamp whose shade had clearly begun life as a Togruta ceremonial drum. Along one wall, a framed fragment of stained transparisteel from some long-dead pleasure yacht threw fractured color across a shelf of mismatched objects: a cracked Geonosian hive-medallion on a cheap stand; a pair of polished river stones from some world he had never named aloud; a small, ugly bronze figurine of a bantha that looked like it had been made by a child and kept anyway. Next to that, a genuine—or at least convincingly genuine—Alderaanian crystal vase held a single spray of Veradune night-orchid, the only thing in the room that looked recently purchased rather than acquired. A faint undercurrent filled the room, something like cinammon and clove.

Art occupied the remaining wall in no particular school. A slashed canvas of rust and gold that might have been a battle or a sunset. A delicate ink-wash of a city skyline that was almost certainly Coruscant seen from a rooftop someone should not have been standing on. A ferrofluid portrait shifted between images of different starships, the brackish liquid swirling into surprisingly detailed shapes, contrast provided by the stark white backplate. A tiny, exquisite holocube cycling through a loop of two hands folding paper cranes, the kind of cheap tourist souvenir that only becomes precious if you remember who handed it to you.

Books and datapads shared a low case with a chipped teacup, a holdout holster empty of its weapon, and a coil of copper wire that had no business being decorative and yet was. Nothing matched. Everything looked like it had been chosen because it meant something, or because it had survived something, or because Dalvos had been unable to leave it behind.

"Make yourself at home," he said, and immediately winced at how inadequate the phrase sounded in a room that was so obviously his. He moved toward the kitchen nook, where a pan still radiated heat and the steaks waited, thick-cut and well-marbled, for the last hard sear. Rice gleamed under that sticky sauce. The pickled bantha sat contritely piled on top.

He glanced back at her, white eyes catching the lamp-light, smile still there and still a little too wide.

"And to answer the question you've been wondering since the Rose—" he tipped the steaks into the pan; they hissed like they had opinions "—I'm pretty sure they're as good as I promised. The everything else is my backup plan in case I oversold them." A beat, softer. "Though I would have been happy with dinner and your company, too. I just... wanted the steaks to have a fighting chance of living up to my bragging. That's an uphill battle even when I'm not trying to talk a pretty woman into coming over for dinner."

He gestured with the tongs toward the two places already set, silks sliding over his cybernetic wrist.

"Sit. Please. Anything to drink? It won't be more than a few minutes for all of this."

Seo Linn

 

[Seo Linn]

Seo stepped inside, and for a few moments, the promised dinner lost the competition for her attention. Her gaze traveled slowly through the apartment as Dalvos moved toward the kitchen. There was so much to look at that she wasn't entirely certain where to begin. Nothing appeared to belong beside anything else, yet somehow all of it belonged here. Her attention first caught on the shade that had once been a ceremonial drum, then wandered through the fractured colors cast by the transparisteel and across the collection beneath it. The battered medallion, polished stones, ridiculous little bantha, and elegant vase occupied the same space without the slightest concern for whether any of them matched. Even the artwork seemed determined not to agree upon what sort of room it inhabited.

Seo's own quarters were almost the opposite. She wasn't particularly austere, but she liked knowing where things belonged. Order came naturally to her, perhaps because so much of her work involved sorting through disorder until the pieces finally made sense. Things had their places, and when she finished using them, they generally returned to their places. Dalvos's apartment seemed to have taken that philosophy as a personal challenge. She rather liked it.

There was something warm about the chaos that prevented her from seeing it as clutter. Seo had spent enough years investigating people to recognize the difference between possessions accumulated simply because someone never discarded anything and objects kept for reasons invisible to everyone but their owner. This room felt like the latter. Perhaps she was wrong about individual pieces, but there was a history here. Things acquired on different worlds, at different times, under circumstances she could only guess at. Some looked valuable, and others decidedly did not, yet Dalvos had apparently decided all of them deserved a place in his home.

Her gaze lingered longest on the little bronze bantha. One corner of her mouth lifted before she moved on to the holocube and watched the hands fold a paper crane through part of its repeating cycle. Seo could have started asking questions immediately. The investigator in her wanted to know where half of these things had come from, while the woman standing in Dalvos's apartment was considerably more interested in which stories he would eventually choose to tell her without being asked.

"This is very different from my quarters," she said at last, turning toward him with unmistakable amusement. There was no criticism behind the observation. If anything, she seemed charmed by the difference. "I think you have more things on that one shelf than I have on display in an entire room."

Seo wandered a little closer to the shelf without touching anything. The temptation to straighten the coil of copper wire into something that looked intentionally placed was quietly ignored. She was a guest, and besides, doing so would probably ruin whatever inexplicable logic had put it there in the first place. "I like it," she added, her gaze sweeping across the apartment once more before returning to Dalvos. "It feels lived in. Like everything has a story, even if I'm fairly certain some of those stories are going to make me question your judgment." Her eyes strayed deliberately toward the little bronze bantha again. "Especially that."

Then the steaks hit the pan, and the sharp hiss pulled Seo's attention toward the kitchen, followed almost immediately by the richer aroma of searing meat. Whatever curiosity the apartment had inspired would now have to share space with dinner. Seo breathed in appreciatively as she approached the table, taking in what he had prepared properly for the first time. The vegetables, rice, sauce, and something atop the rice she didn't immediately recognize made it apparent that Dalvos's backup plan had required considerably more effort than most people's primary plan.

At his explanation, Seo laughed softly. "So everything else exists to protect your reputation in case the steak fails. I'm not sure whether that's confidence or very careful contingency planning." Her eyes lifted toward his when he called her pretty, and the warmth that entered her smile made it clear the compliment had landed exactly as intended. Seo had never been especially susceptible to flattery from strangers, but she was discovering that she rather enjoyed it when it came from Dalvos. "And you already talked the pretty woman into coming over for dinner," she reminded him. "You can stop worrying about whether the steak is going to accomplish that part."

Seo took the offered seat, settling comfortably while leaving him to finish cooking rather than inserting herself into a meal he clearly had under control. Her attention returned briefly to the apartment around her, and she found herself smiling again at the sheer amount of Dalvos contained within it. His home was almost as difficult to follow as one of his conversations, and perhaps that was why she liked it.

At the offer of a drink, she looked back toward him. "Whatever you're having is fine with me. Unless what you're having is another stimulant. I've already seen what happens when you decide those count as a food group." Seo rested her hands loosely together on the table and watched him work for a moment before adding, "And you know I'm going to ask about half the things in this room eventually, don't you? I'm trying very hard to behave like a dinner guest instead of an investigator." Her gold eyes flicked toward the collection again, amusement lingering in them. "I'm making no promises about how long that lasts."

Dalvos Thrakan

 

[Dalvos Thrakan]

"I'm a big believer in contingency plans. I rarely follow my own first plan." He laughed in answer, flashing her a bright smile as he carefully inspected the steak, choosing to give it another few carefully calculated seconds before flipping them with a satisfying plap. "Alright," he said after a moment. "So, which one first?" He gestured around with a wooden spoon for a moment. It was difficult to tell it was wood, at first glance; the rings were so sharply defined and so numerous it almost looked like ridged metal in a wood tone. Was that Wroshyr wood? The whole set of utensils seemed to have a similar banded pattern.

He chose not to address either her comment about having already succeeded at bringing her over, nor her spurious remarks about stimulants as meal replacements. Sometimes hot caff was just easier. "And almost more important I think, what half aren't you going to ask about? Is it because you've already figured out why I have it, or because the items aren't as interesting? I'll have you know, I've carefully curated this collection over a decade of picking up random items and being gifted 'items of cultural significance' that I'm fairly sure are tchotchkes." He glanced around the room, and pointed at a small set of windchimes carved into tiny metallic silhouettes, tinkling in the gentle flow of the air cyclers. "They claim those were made with actual pieces of the Death Star, uhh... The first one, I think. Or was it the second? Whichever one blew up over the uh, forested moon. Of course, given some of the size projections - and the fact that the Memorial Field is still large enough to have its own effect on system gravity lanes - there's probably recycled scrap from the Death Star in just about everything." He waved dismissively, and laughed. "But they did do pretty work on it. Even have tiny gem-chips for the engine flares." He lightly tapped at one of them, the silhouette of a Y-wing with little rubiline streaks caged in silver wire for the engines. After a moment's pause, his lips twisted into a smirk. "Well, I guess I do actually like that one a bit, even if it is starport-scop."

While he spoke, his hands had been in motion; he uncorked a decanter of silvery glass in the shape of a sleek fighter and poured a careful couple of fingers into a pair of glasses, carefully carrying the trio of decorative glass to the table and setting them out before returning to the stove, following some kind of mental countdown. "Corellian whiskey," he told her, as he moved back toward the kitchen. "A good vintage, smooth, not rough like most you'll find."

"Lucky for peddlers across the galaxy, I like souvenirs and don't often get to stay in one place very long."

A careful check. Pause. A handful of seconds passed, and then he pulled the steaks, one by one, onto a tray for them to rest. topping them each with a flake of a hardened buttery substance that yielded its stoic form within moments, pooling into a thin sheen of oil and herbs.

Satisfied, he slid them onto plates, and carefully walked the pair of plates back toward the table, setting hers down with a flourish and a grin. "Dinner, madame," he murmured to her with feigned deference.

Seo Linn

 

[Seo Linn]

Seo's attention shifted from Dalvos to the room when he challenged her to choose, and she considered the question with more seriousness than his collection of alleged tchotchkes probably warranted. The wooden spoon briefly distracted her along the way. Its sharply defined rings caught her eye as he gestured with it, and she found herself wondering whether even his cooking utensils had stories attached to them. Considering everything else she had seen since walking through the door, she wouldn't have been surprised.

"I hadn't divided the room into interesting and uninteresting," she admitted, watching him move between the stove and his collection with practiced ease. "Though now you've made me wonder what I overlooked, which is a particularly effective way of distracting an investigator."

The wind chimes made the decision for her when Dalvos pointed them out. Seo followed his gesture, studying the tiny silhouettes as he explained their purported origin. The claim about Death Star debris earned a distinctly skeptical arch of one pale eyebrow, although she listened without interrupting as he reasoned his own way toward the possibility that recycled pieces of the battle station might be considerably less rare than the seller wanted customers to believe. When he tapped the little Y-wing, her attention settled on the rubiline caught within its engines.

"That one is pretty," Seo conceded. "And I suppose if enough Death Star debris has been circulating for centuries, eventually someone selling a souvenir has to be telling the truth by accident." Her smile deepened as she looked back at him. "Although I think I like that you kept it despite not believing the story. It means the story doesn't have to be true for the thing itself to matter."

That seemed to apply to much of the apartment. Seo had spent enough time dealing with stolen heirlooms to understand that value and worth were rarely synonymous. Something could be almost worthless on the market and utterly irreplaceable to the person who had carried it home. Dalvos's explanation that much of his collection had accumulated through years of travel made the mismatched room make considerably more sense. It was less a deliberately decorated apartment than a physical record of everywhere he had been and the people he had encountered along the way.

Her gaze moved back to the bronze bantha, and curiosity finally won. "That one," she decided, pointing toward it. "The little bantha. You have objects in here that are obviously valuable sitting beside something that looks like it was made by hand, and you kept that where you can see it. So I want that story first." She paused before adding with quiet amusement, "Unless it really is just a terrible bantha you bought at a starport. In which case I reserve the right to be disappointed."

Seo watched him pour the whiskey, noticing the fighter-shaped decanter with another small smile. Apparently, even the container holding the drink had been recruited into Dalvos's campaign against ordinary household objects. She accepted the glass once it reached the table, lifting it slightly toward the light before taking a cautious taste. The whiskey was smoother than the harsher varieties she had encountered, warmth spreading pleasantly after she swallowed.

"That's good." She set the glass down and watched him return to the stove. "And I can understand the souvenirs. If you don't stay anywhere very long, I suppose bringing something away with you is one way of making sure the places don't all become another port you passed through."

There was something in that thought Seo understood from the opposite direction. She traveled frequently enough herself, but she had places she returned to. Lorrd remained home because her family was there. The Silver Jedi had been the constant thread through most of her adult life, regardless of where duty took her. Even here on Veradune, she had quarters of her own and familiarity enough that she hadn't needed Dalvos to explain the world to her. The reminder brought back the secret she had been quietly carrying since their first meeting, and Seo hid the amusement it inspired behind another small sip of whiskey. There would be time for that particular revelation.

The arrival of the plates redirected her attention much more effectively. Seo looked down at the meal as Dalvos presented it with exaggerated formality, taking in the steak alongside the vegetables and rice, her attention lingering curiously on the thin strips arranged over the latter. Whatever teasing she had done about his contingency planning, the amount of effort involved was obvious.

"Thank you," she said, the humor in her expression softening into something more sincere. "This looks wonderful, Dalvos." She glanced toward him before looking back at the plate, curiosity immediately finding a new target as she indicated the unfamiliar strips atop the rice. "Although before I start pretending I know what everything is, what's this?"

She picked up her utensils but paused before cutting into the steak, looking across the table at him with a smile that carried a trace of challenge. "And I haven't forgotten your question. I intend to ask about considerably more than half of this apartment now. You made the mistake of telling me the collection took ten years to build." Her gold eyes swept once more across the eclectic room before settling on him. "That's ten years of stories, and you already know I like listening to you talk."

Seo finally cut into the steak, inspecting the first slice with perhaps a little more ceremony than dinner normally required. After everything Dalvos had said about it aboard the Rose, she felt entitled to make him wait for the verdict. She took a bite, deliberately giving herself time to taste it before meeting his pale eyes again, a smile slowly spreading across her face.

"All right," she conceded. "You didn't oversell the steak."

Dalvos Thrakan