Private A storm in the sky

[Trextan Voidstalker]

Choli swore under her breath. They weren't gonna make it.

Trextan swore more overtly. He stumbled to one side, slamming his artificial hand into the wall. He could rebuff the Ren when the Force closed in from all angles.

"Trextan, get them in the tunnel!" she barked.

This time at least, the little pulse of excitement was brief before the cold fear swallowed it.

"Go, go!" he shouted, almost bundling them ahead. He had to trust her. All their journeys together had built that trust, time apart didn't take it away.

He still felt fear. She had a plan, but he wouldn't let her be captured. He would stand beside her and fight to the last if it came to it.

Trextan was surprised by his own determination to meet that end if he had to.

He felt the flash of cold, felt Choli turning to run after him.

The group bundled into the tube that had extended from Chloe's ship.

"No time to retract the boarding tube!" Trextan shouted, "Just disengage!"

It would leave them squashed in the tube and subject to acceleration without inertia dampeners. It was safer than waiting for the red saber to cut through the outside of their seal.

He almost caught Choli as she left Rave's ship.

"Go!"

 

[Choli Vyn]

Interacting with: Trextan Voidstalker
Armor- x x x x x | Gear x x x x x x x | Weapons x x x x x

Choli pushed off the deck, sprinting toward the boarding tube, her pulse hammering in her ears. The Ren was close. Too close.

Trextan's voice cut through the chaos -- "Disengage!" -- and suddenly the floor beneath her lurched.

She felt the shift before it happened, before the hard clunk of the docking clamps releasing sent a shockwave through the structure.

And in that split second she knew.

She wasn't going to make it.

The ship pulled away, the tube bucking violently. Choli jumped, arms outstretched, fingers grazing the metal rim to reach out for Trextan --

Missed.

The weightless void yanked at her as the boarding tunnel detached completely, its end shearing away in the vacuum of space. Air rushed past her ears in a distorted howl before silence swallowed everything.

For a heartbeat, she was still. Suspended.

Then the black swallowed her whole.

Her breath hitched. Her suit sealed --- thank the stars -- but the sheer, gut-dropping terror of free-floating in open space made her stomach lurch. The ship was ahead, the stars wheeling around her in dizzying spirals.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

Fingertips grazed onky briefly. Everything in Space was weightless but still had mass. He had been braced to pull her after him.

The ship started to pull away. Choli was spinning. The iris door sealed shut before him.

"Get out of this section and closed the doors!" Trextan shouted.

"This isn't an airlock..."

"Yeah, I know."

This was going to be unpleasant. Really unpleasant.

The others retreated and closed doors after them. Trextan grabbed the edge of the bulkhead, fingers grasping so tightly they distorted steel.

Trextan exhaled. He opened the door.

Air rushed past him. Gone in an instant. It started to hiss it's way out of the rips in his suit. He stretched out with the Force and grabbed Choli.

His skin felt like it was swelling. Darkness crept into his vision. His lungs wanted to draw in air that didn't exist.

Trextan released the bulkhead and drew Choli towards him. He lost his vision. Grasping at her with his hand as he fell back.

As darkness took him, he realised he hadn't even thought that he would need to be able to speak to call for them to close the iris and repressurise the room.

 

[Choli Vyn]

Interacting with: Trextan Voidstalker
Armor- x x x x x | Gear x x x x x x x | Weapons x x x x x

A steady beeping.

Soft, rhythmic, insistent. It seemed for Choli as if she'd been listening to it for hours, long enough that it had melted into the background, just another noise in the hum of the ship. But this time, it changed -- just enough to make her head snap up.

Trextan stirred.

She was on her feet before she realized it, her pulse spiking as his eyelids fluttered.

"He's waking up." Her voice sounded rough. Tired.

His breath hitched, chest rising as he inhaled sharply. His brow furrowed, muscles tensing under the med-pod's soft glow. For a second, she saw it again, the way he'd looked in the void after he grabbed her, his skin too pale, his unconscious body motionless as Trix and Arrayx rushed towards them.

Her stomach twisted.

Then his eyes opened, unfocused at first, then locking onto her.

Choli exhaled, crossing her arms tight over her chest. "You're an idiot."

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

Trextan sat up. He pushed his back against the headboard. His head was spinning but nothing was acutely painful.

"Alright..."

He glanced around the room.

"... I'm in a bed..."

Trextan squinted. They had been assaulting the vault ship. Everyone had been injured.

"... You're angry at me..."

Trextan cast his thoughts back as he tried to realise why. It seemed just as important as remembering why he ended up in a medical bay.

Choli Vyn

 

[Choli Vyn]

Interacting with: Trextan Voidstalker
Armor- x x x x x | Gear x x x x x x x | Weapons x x x x x

Choli's arms were crossed so tight against her chest, it was a wonder she wasn't cutting off circulation. She stood at the foot of his bed, jaw clenched, eyes dark with something between exhaustion and barely restrained emotion.

"Yeah, you could have died," she snapped, voice taut as a live wire. "Again."

Trextan blinked at her, his usual slow, thoughtful processing at play. That only made her angrier.

"You really don't remember?" she demanded. "How you nearly got yourself killed because you decided to throw yourself into danger?" She exhaled sharply, her hands flexing before she re-crossed her arms. "You pulled the same reckless stunt on Tatooine, remember? That storm was bad enough, and you still ran in looking for that Krayt Dragon. Now we're here, and you -- "

She bit off her words, turning away for half a second like that would help her find her calm. It didn't.

"I could have figured something out," she muttered, shoulders rigid. "But you... you seem to do things without even caring what happens to you."

The anger wavered then, something unspoken brimming underneath it.

The kind of feeling she wasn't good at putting into words. So instead, she settled for glaring at him, waiting to see if he had the nerve to argue back.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

She was furious. Trextan awkwardly grimaced as her gaze bore down upon him. He wanted to have something to say. Usually they had worked through sometime like this by stubbornly holding their own until they found an understanding or the tension spilled out into something else.

He genuinely couldn't remember. If he had almost died, that would make sense.

When she turned away her voice changed. That was almost worse.

"We were running," he said, trying to draw the memories back. He would find them. It was distressing in its own right to have the gap. It wasn't a gap. It was like the canvas of his memories after the fight with the sith spawn was smeared out.

"If everyone alright?" he asked. "I'm sorry for... What I did. What did I do?"

He settle one hand on top of the other on his lap. Nothing was hurting acutely. Breathing felt slightly rough. He didn't think he had lost a fight with a Ren.

 

[Choli Vyn]

Interacting with: Trextan Voidstalker
Armor- x x x x x | Gear x x x x x x x | Weapons x x x x x

"What did you do?" she echoed, turning back around to face him. Her hazel eyes burned gold, flaring with frustration, but just beneath it, the edges of copper flickered with a hint of raw fear.

Her hands curled into fists at her sides as she took a sharp breath, trying and failing to reel herself in.

"What did you do? Trextan, the tunnel blew when Chloe disengaged it! I got sucked out into the void, and you -- " her voice cracked for half a second, and she forced herself to push through it, "you opened the door and exposed yourself to it, using the Force to drag me back... and you...stupid, reckless, impossible--"

She dragged a hand through her hair, chest rising and falling in short, angry breaths.

"You got me back in, and then you blacked out." Her voice lowered, tight with emotion. "You weren't breathing when I managed to close the door and pressurized the room."

The fight bled out of her then, like she'd spent all of her energy just getting those words out. Her arms wrapped around herself, her jaw working as if she was still trying to keep herself together. The anger in her gaze wavered, shifting from gold to deep gray in stubborn pensiveness but with the faintest ring of blue-gray at the edges, laced with something else.

Well, if Trextan ever wondered if Choli still cared about him and that he was okay, he had his answer.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

Trextan didn't look away. His lips tightened and he listened to every word. It was deeply uncomfortable to watch it all play out. He had grown from the teenager she had known.

Her initial sharp anger at his question was followed by her struggling to explain what had happened. The tube brought back a memory. It was still more emotion and the strange sharp pain of the air leaving his lungs.

He felt Choli running out of steam as she recalled how she had found him. As Choli hugged herself and slowed her breathing, Trextan could only picture how she may have reacted to find him not breathing.

His chest rose high and then fell sharply.

"I'm sorry you had to find me like that. I don't really remember what I was thinking, but I must have thought I had no choice. Thank you for explaining..."

His own voice broke off and he looked down at the bed. For a few seconds there was only the sound of their laboured breaths.

"It must have been stupid," he said quietly. He shuffled to his left and patted the bed beside him.

"But I'm alright. You're safe so... Just sit with me a little while?"

Trextan offered a small smile. It was a concillatory smile. She had been worried a out him. For all her anger, he wanted her to know that he would be alright.

 

[Choli Vyn]

Interacting with: Trextan Voidstalker
Armor- x x x x x | Gear x x x x x x x | Weapons x x x x x

Choli didn't answer right away.

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, arms still loosely folded like she didn't know what to do with them now that the fight had drained out of her. Her gaze lingered on him -- Trextan, a little paler, broader than she remembered, a little more lined around the mouth. Grown. Not just older, but heavier in the heart.

She bit the inside of her cheek, jaw twitching. Yeah, she'd been furious. Still was, in a way. But she also knew the way it felt when that connection line had snapped, when the stars had spun and gravity had disappeared and the last thing she saw before the black was him, diving after her.

He hadn't even hesitated.

"Yeah," she said finally, voice low, like if she said it too loud the moment would scatter. "I can do that."

Choli exhaled, quiet and shaky, before moving. The chair scraped softly as she pulled it closer to the bed. She didn't say another word, just sat down and reached for his hand; hers calloused and warm, his bandaged and still faintly cold.

The hum of the air recycler filled the space between them, a steady lull mixed with the distant pulse of the ship's engines. For the first time in hours, maybe longer, she let herself be still. Not in fight-or-flight. Not barking orders or patching damage. Just there, beside him.

She didn't let go.