Private An Unexpected Reprieve (Lumiya)

[Vendryn Del'therak]

There were always limits. Edges. Everything was bounded in some form, delineated, enclosed. Walls that could not be climbed, or burrowed beneath, or even broken through in some cases. Everything had their limits, which you could not find until you pushed. How else could you know? How could you know what was glass and what was stone until you pushed against it? He had always believed in pushing. Always. Exploring, finding the boundaries, evading them, outsmarting them, or battering them down with concentrated willpower. He had never shied away from it, not even when it brought him pain and strife. Such suffering was simply the price demanded by progress. Everything had a price.

Everything had limits.

Right now, Vendryn could feel his own limit fast approaching. His end. Nothing existed beyond it. What could? A half-existence as a shadow in the Force? A whispering shade, muttering snatches of stolen wisdom to uncaring acolytes? Nothing worthwhile lay beyond the veil, when nothing worthwhile was being left before it. How could he dare dream of the eternity after his death when he had barely made use of the life which came before it? Darth Cenotas, he had called himself. Such hubris.

Darkness. A yawning void where awareness had been a moment before.

He would've laughed, if laughing wasn't the harbinger of such agony. He felt the air bubbling in his lungs, staring up at the drying slick of azure blood that clung to the metal he was impaled upon. He had been there, transfixed like a butterfly, staring up at the implement of his own undoing. No grand battle this had been, not for himself, anyway. Even more galling, it wasn't even personal. It was an ambush, plain and simple. They had been betrayed, though the traitor was on another ship entirely; their squadron had simply been lured into an ambush and struck from the skies. A battlefield far too vast for any one man, even himself, to make a difference. He had simply been in transit, between one place and another. The wrong place, the wrong time. Even his own powers had been insufficient to turn aside the killing blow. A single proton torpedo that had passed their defenses, and nearly struck the nose of the ship. In a desperate surge of power, Vendryn had sent the torpedo spiraling off course, pushing it away from the armored cockpit where he had stood. His death was not the instant boiling furor of an explosion, snuffed out in an instant. Instead, the torpedo had sheared the engines from the ship, and sent them tumbling down to the planet's surface. He wasn't even sure what planet he was going to die on.

The crash, uncontrolled, had been barely survivable. Of all those standing on the bridge, only he still drew breath. The ship struck and tumbled, and his seat had been shorn from the floor, throwing him free and... onto a jutting piece of broken railing. The metal was twisted around a buckled piece of hull from the first impact. It stuck forth from the mess of the navigator's console like a flagpole, awaiting a cause to dress it in finery.

Darkness. A pitch black absence of thought. They were coming more often, now. Was it blood loss? Would he simply slip into darkness and never rise again?

He knew he could simply pull himself off of it. Simply wasn't quite, perhaps, the correct word for the effort he knew it would took, the agony that would steal what breath his single remaining lung could draw. Just thinking about the sheer blinding bolts of pain that followed any adjustment was enough to make the action unpalatable, but worse was that he knew it would kill him. Healing had never been his strongest art, and often numbered amongst his weakest. He knew something of the art of drawing the life force from another, but the guttering candles that had occupied the bridge with him had only given him enough strength not to fade into a sleep from which he would not awaken. Once he assessed that they would be unable to affect his rescue, Vendryn simply drew the life from their bodies, sustaining himself. Their sacrifices would not be in vain.

Even though he had no plan, no hope, he simply could not allow himself to resign to the inevitable and let himself die. He would fight to the last moment, to the very last breath, hanging on tooth and nail to that moment, unwilling to relinquish his tenacious grasp upon life.

A flicker of the dark, cloying, clinging, grasping at the edges of his vision. Had he blacked out again? Had he slipped? How long had it been?

But he could see his limits. There were always limits. Edges. Everything was bounded in some form, delineated, enclosed... Even his own life. It was a line, was it not? It had a beginning, but only when it had an end could you identify the middle. An end. And he could see it.

Even as his mind nearly drowned itself in another cycle of introspection, an ostrich burying its head in metaphor to deny the cold blade of reality plunged into his chest, he heard something. Movement. Someone living, someone... Not hurt? Not part of the crew, then; there had been only ten or so aboard his small courier when it was shot down, and five of them he was certain were dead. The rest he could only assume; when the engines were vaporized, no one back there could have survived. So who? Who could it be? Who wandered the halls of his tomb?

He lifted his head, marginally, trying to turn and face the direction the sound came from. Reaching with his mind, searching for a flicker of life or-

Darkness, a deeper black this time, sticking to his thoughts like tar. He could not shed them. This darkness was absolute, encroaching. Where was his lightsaber? Where was his blade? If only he could find it, he could strike back against the darkness. He could drive it back, just for a moment. He knew it wasn't at his hip; he had reached for it when he first realized his plight. He couldn't even sense it amongst the ruins. He was alone.

Was he alone?

The noises, the movement, drew closer.

Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

The night had settled in softly. Lumiya had chosen a quiet stretch of open ground beyond the trade routes; where the terrain broke into low stone ridges and wind-smoothed sand. A small fire burned low between her hands, more for habit than necessity, it's warmth pulling the last of the day out of her bones. Her medkit rested beside her, already half-organized for the morning’s continued travel. For the first time in a long while, she had not been running toward anything. Not responding to anything. Not arriving after the fact. Just....still. It was unfamiliar in a way she hadn’t quite decided was comforting yet.

Then the sky changed. At first it was only a distant disturbance; too fast, too bright, a thin line cutting through the upper atmosphere where nothing should have been moving that way. Lumiya’s gaze lifted automatically, the fire forgotten as her attention sharpened. A ship. Wrong angle. Wrong descent. Not controlled. Her breath caught slightly as the trajectory became clear. It was going down.

For a moment she just watched it, as though distance alone might change the outcome. But when the vessel broke through lower atmosphere and began to trail instability - burning systems, uneven thrust, the telltale violence of failing control - something in her shifted immediately. She was already moving before she fully decided to.

The fire was left behind without ceremony. Medkit lifted in one hand, cloak pulled tighter against the wind, Lumiya broke into a run across uneven ground, following the arc of the falling ship as best she could. The Force pressed faintly at the edges of her awareness; not guiding so much as warning her that time was already running out. She didn’t think about why she was going. Only that there were people inside. And that meant it mattered.

By the time she reached the edge of the impact trail, the sky had gone quiet again. The smoke plume marked the direction like a wound carved into the landscape, drifting upward in slow, unstable curls. The crash site itself came into view gradually; fractured metal scattered across sand and stone, the remains of a vessel torn open by impact and momentum. The kind of destruction that left very few reasons to expect life.

Lumiya slowed. Her breathing steadied. Then she stepped inside. The wreckage was the first thing she registered; twisted durasteel, fractured plating, the sharp, lingering scent of burned circuitry and displaced air. It told her enough before she even fully processed the scale of what had happened. This was not a controlled landing. Not even close. But someone was still alive. That realization came second. Quiet. Careful. Immediate.

She moved through the corridor with slow precision, each step placed deliberately so as not to disturb anything unstable. Her hand hovered near her belt instinctively, not drawing a weapon, not preparing for violence, but for balance. For certainty. The Force here felt....disrupted. Not dark. Not light. Just fractured in a way that made focus difficult to hold.

Then she found him. He was pinned. Wounded. Barely held together by circumstance more than endurance. For a moment, Lumiya didn’t speak. She simply took in the reality of it. The stillness in his breath. The way life clung stubbornly where it should not have been able to. “....You’re alive,” she said softly at last.

Her attention shifted immediately to the metal impaling him, then to the surrounding structure, mapping out what could be moved, what would collapse if disturbed, what would kill him faster if she acted without care. “I need you to stay still,” she added gently, already lowering herself closer so she could see the angle properly. “Moving it the wrong way will make this worse.”

There was no hesitation in her hands as she reached out; not to pull him free yet, but to steady what remained of him. To assess. To anchor him to something other than pain and fading awareness.

Her voice softened slightly as she met his gaze properly for the first time. “....I’m going to try to get you out of this,” Lumiya said quietly and calmly “But I need you to hold on long enough for me to do it.”

Tag: Vendryn Del'therak

 

[Vendryn Del'therak]

"...You're alive," she said. The voice was soft, at the edge of his consciousness.

Of course I'm alive, he snapped back. The thought never quite made the long trek from his mind to his mouth.
He sat back, in the comfort of his own thoughts. Of course I'm alive. I will not die this way. Who are you? What happened? Are you here to rescue me, or finish the job?

There was something important. Something vital he was missing. What was it? Did he lose something, forget something? What could possibly be so important, fill him with such a sense of urgency, near panic, and yet the memory of it was entirely gone from his mind? What could he be forgetting?

"I need you to stay still," she said to him. "Moving it the wrong way will make this worse."

"I'll do my best," he thought back, confused by the way the words echoed in his head. Weren't they supposed to leave? To go somewhere, and tell this oddly kind voice what he was thinking? He pushed at the thoughts, struggling to move them without hands. Why was everything so heavy in his mind?

The Volpai's muscles slowly relaxed, seeming on the verge of surrender. There was a thin tremor, then another. His eyes opened for two lazy blinks, and his mouth gaped as if waiting for the words to simply fall out of him. "Best," he finally murmured. "Best. Best. Do my best." His breath rattled. Breathing was so painful. Maybe I should stop. Why shouldn't I stop?

Urgency clawed at his mind.

"You're alive," she said.
"I need you to stay still."

It seemed to shift into place abruptly, a final connection completing the circuit of his thoughts. There's someone here. She's here, she's alive, and she wants to help me. I am alive, and I need to stay still.

His eyes fluttered again, and he slowly tilted his head away from her. After a moment, he slowly tilted his head back, a faint tremor passing through him at the touch of her hand. "I'm alive," he agreed with her, "I'm alive. I'll do my best." His sapphire eyes were foggy, glazed with pain.

He had sunk down to the T-shaped intersection in the railing; the strut was flat against his mid-back, keeping him from sinking down any further. In truth, it was lucky he'd landed how he had; if it had been less stable, he might have slipped off and done even more damage. He stared at her without really seeing her, though his pupils seemed to be struggling to focus. His lower left hand twitched intermittently, seemingly uncontrolled, while his other three held more still. His lower right, after a moment, reached back, gently touching her arm at the elbow. A moment of comfort, of reassurance.

Something in his mind reacted to her. There was something about her. He couldn't imagine what it was through the darkness clinging to the edges of his mind, but something in him recognized something in her. Surely it didn't matter, if she was here to help him? There was a thread coming from that thought. A stranger. Helping him. That odd feeling.

The fact that it likely meant she was his enemy didn't seem to register, these facts spinning about his mind loosely, unconnected.

His robes hung lank around him, the ends still dripping azure, soaked with his own blood. How was he still alive?

Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

Lumiya went very still when his eyes finally focused on her. Not from fear. But from relief. The sound of his voice; fragmented and barely coherent as it was, mattered more than the words themselves. Confusion meant consciousness. Consciousness meant he was still fighting to remain here. “Good,” she murmured softly when he agreed to stay still. “That’s good.”

Her attention returned quickly to the wound before the quiet reassurance in her expression could settle into anything else. The metal had passed clean through him, but not cleanly enough to be survivable without intervention. The dark blue blood soaking his robes caught her off guard for half a second; unfamiliar enough that her stomach did not react the way it normally might have. Not human-enough, then. Or at least not entirely. That helped more than she cared to admit. Still, the sheer amount of it made the situation impossible to mistake. And the last thing that he needed was for her to faint overtop of him.

Her hands moved carefully around the wound without touching the impaling metal itself, assessing what little she could in the unstable lighting of the wreck. The railing had pinned him in the only way that might have kept him alive this long; pressure where pressure was needed, cruelly preventing the worst of the bleeding while trapping him in agony. Removing it wrong would kill him. Leaving it would too.

Lumiya exhaled slowly through her nose, centering herself against the rising pressure in her chest. Think first. Panic later.

The touch against her elbow drew her attention back to him. Small. Weak. Almost absent-minded in its gentleness. For a moment, something in her expression shifted. It was not pity. Not exactly. Recognition, perhaps. Of someone enduring more pain than their body should have allowed while still trying to reassure someone else. “You don’t need to comfort me,” she said quietly, and there was the faintest trace of warmth beneath the words now. “You should be spending that energy on breathing.”

Carefully, she set her medkit beside her knee and began pulling supplies free; sealant spray, synthweave compresses, stabilizers, a small injector she prayed she would not need immediately. Her movements remained controlled despite the growing awareness that she was very alone out here with someone balanced dangerously close to death.

And then she felt it again. That strange sensation at the edge of her awareness. Not darkness in the way she had been taught to fear it. Not the cold violence some carried in the Force like an open wound. This was.... different. Heavy. Deep. Fractured. Like standing near the edge of something vast that had already been broken long before she arrived.

Lumiya tried not to focus on it. Labels could come later. Survival came first. Her eyes lifted back toward him briefly, watching the way his focus drifted in and out. “Stay with me,” she said gently, quieter this time. “I know it hurts. But if you lose consciousness completely before I can stabilize this properly, getting you out becomes much harder.”

Slowly, carefully, she shifted closer to examine the section of twisted railing protruding behind him. Her brow tightened faintly in concentration as she traced the angle of the metal through the wreckage around them. “There’s no safe way to remove this while you’re upright,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. “Which means I’ll need to support your weight before I move it...” A pause followed as her mind worked through possible ways that she could remove the metal. Then, softer still she added: “This is going to hurt....”

For the first time since finding him, hesitation flickered through her. Not fear of him. A fear of failing him. But it lasted only a moment.

Lumiya drew a slow breath, steadied her trembling hands, and looked back into his unfocused sapphire eyes. “Can you tell me your name?” she asked quietly. “If I’m going to keep you alive tonight, I’d rather not think of you as a stranger.”

Tag: Vendryn Del'therak

 

[Vendryn Del'therak]

Everything had limits. Limits. He had his limits. Did he? He wasn't sure anymore. This stranger said she could help him. Perhaps she could. She wouldn't want his name if it were only a burden on her conscience, would she?

Conscience. How strange a thought. Why would her conscience be important? Why was it vital? Because people like her needed to help other people.

But what were people like her? Why did it alarm him so? Why did his instincts want him to destroy her?

He realized, after several long seconds, that he had been staring at her in silence with his right pair of eyes, the primary eye seeming to have trouble focusing, while the secondary had latched onto her like a lighthouse on a rocky shoreline.

"It hurts," he agreed. Everything has limits. "But it can't..." He paused a moment. How could he explain? "But I cannot hurt more." Everything has limits. Surely pain does too. Surely he could not be in more pain than every breath created. He couldn't parse the concept of it hurting more than it already did.

For once, his curiosity did not want to see what lay beyond his knowledge; the breadth of agony he had already witnessed was knowledge enough to sate the beast of intellect.

"I have... Have strength." His arms moved feebly. "Can... hold. Hold up. Help you." He gave a low growl in his throat, and turned his head away from her, spitting a glob of something dark and slimy; hopefully it wasn't anything important. He gave her elbow one more gentle squeeze before his hands slowly, oh so slowly, shifted forward, trying to ease the movement so it pulled as little as possible on the muscles surrounding the railing. He held onto the blood-slick shaft, loosely, more resting his hands upon it. Gathering his strength.

"Vendryn," he finally whispered; the name had weight, as if he were still stuck on the idea of it being on her conscience. Of his death being on her conscience. It was weighted down with hope and fear. "I am... Vendryn Del'therak," he mumbled to her, head tilting slightly in her direction, the slightest movement telegraphing an earnest wish to dip his head respectfully.

"If you're going... to keep me alive tonight," he murmured in reply, a hint of the intention to smile on his azure-stained lips, "I'd like to know... Who to thank." It could've been a laugh, or merely a rattle in his chest that followed. His hands squeezed gently, as if assessing whether or not he could actually help pull himself up. Perhaps sixty-forty; he'd taken worse odds, though not by choice.

"Limits," he mumbled quietly, voice trailing in and out, not realizing his inner monologue was flowing as freely as his blood, "I have my limits... but so does pain. Pain has limits. It will not exceed me."

Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

For a long moment after he spoke, Lumiya said nothing. Not because she lacked an answer. But because something about the way he spoke through the pain unsettled her in a way she couldn’t immediately name. Not the injury itself. Not even the blood. It was the calm certainty threaded through his suffering; the strange, relentless refusal to yield no matter how close to death he plainly was.

Pain has limits. It will not exceed me.

Her eyes lingered on him quietly as he drifted between coherence and exhaustion, the secondary pair of eyes fixed on her with an intensity that felt oddly lucid compared to the rest of him. Whatever he was, whatever life had shaped someone into enduring this much pain while speaking about it like an intellectual problem to be solved, Lumiya suspected he had not arrived here by gentle paths. But he was still alive. And he had told her his name.

“Vendryn,” she repeated softly, as though anchoring him more firmly to the moment by saying it aloud. “Alright.” The faintest trace of warmth touched her voice then; tired, steady, human. “I’m Lumiya.”

Her hands continued working while she spoke, opening a sterile compress and carefully positioning it around the wound without disturbing the metal itself. The blood slicked across her gloves in dark azure streaks that caught strangely in the fractured emergency lighting. She tried not to think too hard about how much of it there was.

“You’re right about one thing,” she murmured gently. “You are very strong.” Her gaze lifted briefly toward him again. “But strength isn’t going to make your lung stop filling with blood if we do this badly.” The words were practical rather than cruel. Calm. Honest.

Lumiya shifted carefully onto one knee beside him, studying the twisted section of railing behind his back again. Her brow tightened faintly in concentration as she worked through the problem piece by piece. “If I pull the metal straight out while you’re sitting like this, the damage will tear wider.” A pause followed. “But if I can support your weight first...” Her eyes flicked briefly toward the collapsed section of flooring beside them. “....I might be able to lower you enough to slide it free without the edge catching.” Might. The uncertainty stayed unspoken.

Vendryn’s attempt to move made her attention sharpen immediately. “No - easy,” she said softly, one hand instinctively settling against his wrist before he could try to pull himself upright properly. “Don’t test it yet.” The contact stilled there for half a second longer than necessary. Then Lumiya carefully released him and reached for another sealant strip from the medkit. “You don’t need to prove that you can survive this alone,” she said quietly. Something in the words carried more weight than the situation immediately required, as though the thought had existed in her long before tonight.

Outside the ruined hull, the desert wind moved softly through fractured metal, low and hollow like distant breathing. Inside, everything felt strangely suspended between moments; life, death, pain, exhaustion, all balanced on careful decisions and failing light.

Lumiya exhaled slowly, steadying herself before looking back at him again. “When I move this,” she said gently, “I need you focused on me. Not the pain. Not whatever else is in your head.” A faint pause followed, quieter now. “Can you do that?” Even as she asked it, her hands betrayed the slightest tremor before stilling again. Because despite the calm in her voice, Lumiya knew the truth. If she made the wrong choice here, Vendryn Del’therak would die with her hands on him.

Tag: Vendryn Del'therak

 

[Vendryn Del'therak]

"Lumiya," he answered her, tasting the word, rolling it around on his tongue. The name seemed appropriate, somehow; there was little enough space left between his mind and his mouth that he said as much. "It suits you." He shifted his gaze upward as he listened to her. His hands grasped uselessly at the metal, both understanding her words and despising them. The pain of being entirely at another's mercy... was nothing compared to the spear through his chest, but it was not insignificant.

"I am trusting you," he stated, clearly, slowly enunciating the words, "Lumiya. I am trusting you with my life. That is a very rare privilege." His eyes closed, clearly gathering himself. His hands shifted once more, not gripping, but preparing to grip. He thought to say something, but the words were swallowed up by the upwelling sensation in his chest, the liquid heat. He felt his chest tighten around it, muscles spasming as they sought release, fought for breath.

The Darkness took him. It held him like a lover, held him close, embraced him body and soul. It pulled at him like a tender caress, with all the force of a falling moon. The pain surged and raged, thrashing within him like a wounded beast, kicking out at his ribs and trampling his stomach, goring his mind. It swallowed his sight, his words, his thoughts, drowning him in darkness and silence broken only by the staccato thumping of his heart.

He rose from the depths, clinging to that sound, the heavy pounding of his heart dragging him back. His eyes opened again, vision swimming as he realized the coughing fit had driven him unconscious for some time. Seconds? Minutes? He wasn't sure. He could hear her speaking, and he clung to the words like a raft in a storm. A lifeline tying him to the Light. The Light. What Light? His mind swam as broken thoughts pieced themselves back together.

"Focus on me," she told him. "Not the pain. Not whatever else is in your head."

He realized, after a scattering of seconds, gathering them in his hands as if precious pearls, that she had asked him something. Can you do that?

Can I? He laughed internally. Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do...

I can...

"Focus on me." Lumiya. Focus on Lumiya.

He drew in as deep a breath as one aching and abused lung could manage, and then forced his eyes - all four of them - to settle upon her. As hard and cold as the gemstones they resembled, his eyes were locked on her. There was a single-minded determination, a ferocity to the expression, as if she had laid a challenge before him. Perhaps it was.

"Focus on you." He repeated. "No matter what. Not... my pain, or my thoughts. Focus on you, Lumiya." His voice lowered to a harsh whisper, as if the words twisted fresh agony within him. "But make it soon. I do not think I can swim for much longer."

Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

For a moment, Lumiya didn’t respond. Not because she didn’t hear him; but because the weight of what he had just said settled in a way that made the air feel suddenly thinner.

I am trusting you with my life.

There wasn’t time to dwell on it. There never was, in moments like this. But something about the way he said it which was so certain, so absolute even while half-drowning in pain, that it made her chest tighten in a way that she couldn’t immediately dismiss.

She exhaled once, slowly, and nodded. “Then stay with me,” she said quietly. “Just a little longer.” Her hands moved. No hesitation now. Only structure. Only sequence. One arm slid carefully beneath his shoulders, bracing him against her own body weight. The angle immediately told her exactly how wrong this was going to feel for him before she even began. But there was no safer alternative left. “On three,” she murmured. She paused. Not for him to answer, but just long enough to steady herself. “One...” Her grip tightened slightly, anchoring him against her. “Two...” The Force brushed at the edge of her awareness, not as power, but as awareness sharpened to a knife’s edge. Every variable. Every shift in pressure. Every inch of twisted metal behind him. “Three.”

She moved. Not upward. Not outward. But downward, guiding his weight carefully off the impaling rail and toward the collapsed section she had identified earlier. It wasn’t gentle. It couldn’t be. But it was controlled; every movement measured so that nothing tore further than it already had. The sound the metal made as it shifted was sharp enough to cut through even the desert’s silence. For a split second, everything threatened to go wrong. Then the pressure changed. The railing was still inside him; but no longer anchored by the same brutal tension. The worst of the tearing force had been released.

Lumiya didn’t waste the moment. “Now,” she said, sharper this time, focused entirely. “Hold still. This part has to be fast.” Her hands reached for the exposed section of metal behind him, stabilizing both him and the structure at once. Her grip wasn’t strong in the physical sense; but there was a steadiness to it that came from somewhere deeper than muscle. A careful inhale. And then she began to work the angle free.

“I need you to breathe through it,” she added quietly, closer now, voice steadying him more than instructing. “Not against it. But through it. And Vendryn....” Her eyes flicked briefly to his, steady even now. “You’re doing exactly what I need you to.”

The moment before the final movement felt like it stretched too long. Not because anything was still, but because everything was waiting. Lumiya adjusted her grip again, carefully shifting her hand placement along the exposed section of metal. The angle mattered. Too shallow and it would scrape. Too fast and it would tear. Too slow and it would drag him back into the worst of it.

Her focus narrowed until the wreckage, the desert, even the sky beyond the shattered hull faded into something irrelevant. There was only him. Only the injury. Only the math of survival.

“Alright,” she murmured, mostly to herself now. “Almost there.” Her hands tightened. The Force brushed again. Not powerfully, but insistently, like pressure behind thought. Not control. Just clarity. Every point of resistance revealed itself in stark, unforgiving detail.

She exhaled once. Then moved. This time there was no warning. She shifted the rail outward and down, following the path she had already carved through his position; unhooking it from the torn structure while simultaneously supporting his weight so he didn’t drop into the opening it left behind.

The metal resisted. For a heartbeat, it held. Then it gave. The sound was wet, sharp, and immediate - more vibration than noise. The sudden release of pressure sent a ripple through Vendryn’s body that Lumiya felt through her arms more than she saw. She adjusted instantly, absorbing the shift before it could become collapse. The railing slid free. Not cleanly. Not gently. But completely.

For one suspended second, everything was weightless; his body no longer held in that impossible, lethal tension. Then gravity remembered them both. Lumiya dropped backward with him, rolling just enough to prevent him from striking the broken hull behind them. Her arms stayed locked around his upper body, keeping him from collapsing flat against the wreckage where the shock alone might finish what the blade had started.

The metal clanged loudly as it hit the ground beside them. Silence followed. Not peace; just the absence of immediate catastrophe.

Lumiya didn’t move at first. Her breathing was controlled, but tight and measured in that way that only came after forcing herself through something precise and dangerous. Then she exhaled. “....Okay,” she said softly, more to herself than to him. “That part is done.”

Her gaze flicked immediately to the wound. Blood loss. Air intake. Tissue damage. Stability. All still critical. But now survivable. Her hand shifted to his shoulder, steadying him gently as she leaned closer; not pulling away, not yet releasing him fully. “Stay with me,” she said again, quieter now. “You’re still here.” Then, with something almost like careful relief threading into her exhaustion she added: “....And I’m not letting you leave just because that part is over.”

Tag: Vendryn Del'therak

 

[Vendryn Del'therak]

She moved. Not upward, not outward, but downward, guiding his weight carefully off the impaling rail.

Vendryn rarely has to consider when he has truly been wrong. His decisions are made to the best of his knowledge, judgments following as simply and cleanly as an equation. Plug in the variables, and the decision he makes is the best one possible for the occasion, given his skills, ability and knowledge.

She had told him not to get lost in his head. He was mindful of that. Focus not on his head, or his chest, or his chest, or his chest, or his-

But a clinical, detached part of him, watching the steel moving through him in a fashion that reminded him of watching through the transparent shell of a monorail, seeing the way the light bent around the edge of the glass, almost making it look like the car was consuming the rail, and it vanished down into endless depths; that quiet, methodical voice had a simple judgment, a statement of fact, an admission of his own utter failure.

There was not, as near as he could determine, an upper limit to pain. Much like the monorail, he simply watched as it grew, and grew, and grew...

And his eyes, though the tertiary pair flickered and grew hazy now and then with particularly coarse movements, remained fixed upon her.

His eyes remained open, and yet slammed themselves shut; nothing, no emotion, no feeling leaked out from the gaze of his primary pair. They were steely, cold, empty in a way that spoke of one accustomed to pain, to trauma. Detachment, like a man inspecting a butterfly pinned to the wall, or a coroner marking time of death. There was focus, but there was an empty nothing that swallowed up all the pain, all the screams that couldn't worm their way around the piece of metal lodged in his chest, muscles tensed into iron cords that stood out from his skin as clearly as tensioned cables.

And then it was done. His arms wrapped around her, all four clinging to her with desperate but feeble strength, the tension flowing out of him like it had become snared upon some snarl in the railing, torn out of him alongside the piece of metal.

As she spoke, his face drew into a rictus, as if all the screams that had been bottled up had forced their way to his lips and died upon his tongue, their corpses pouring forth as a shattered groan, coarse-edged noises tumbling from his throat.

His lips moved, though no sound emerged, as if the desire to speak had died along with them. It was difficult to tell, through the sheen of blood on his lips and the utter blue-ice sheen of his skin, pale with pain and shock, but it looked like he was repeating to himself, still here.

He went limp, finally, as she settled him into a sitting position, as if every muscle had at once decided to cease their efforts. His eyelids fluttered lazily, hands falling to his sides and clasping loosely at air.

Yet his eyes remained focused on her, even as his head drifted, wavered from side to side.

Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

For one terrible moment after the railing came free, Lumiya thought he had died. Not because his eyes closed. Not because he went limp against her. But because the sound that left him afterward did not sound human enough to belong to someone still surviving it.

Her arms tightened instinctively around him as the last of the tension drained out of his body in violent tremors and broken breath. She could feel the instability in him now that the metal was gone; the fragile imbalance that the impalement itself had cruelly been helping to contain. Warm azure blood spread rapidly beneath her hands, soaking through the synthweave at an alarming rate....And there was so much of it.

For half a heartbeat, nausea surged sharply in her chest. The smell of blood. The heat of it. The terrible intimacy of wounds opened this deeply. Her stomach twisted hard enough that black spots threatened briefly at the edges of her vision. Lumiya swallowed against it immediately, forcing air slowly into her lungs as she steadied herself. Not now. Later. You can fall apart later.

Her eyes closed for only the briefest instant before reopening with renewed focus. Vendryn’s gaze was still fixed on her even through the haze overtaking him. Still here. “Hey,” she said softly at once, grounding both him and herself in the sound of her own voice. One gloved hand shifted carefully against the side of his face, keeping his drifting focus anchored. “Stay with me. Don’t disappear on me now.”

Her attention snapped immediately back to the wound. The damage was worse without the railing obscuring it. One lung had partially collapsed; she could hear it now in the wet instability of each breath he tried to draw. Blood bubbled faintly at the edge of the torn tissue beneath fractured ribs while deeper internal damage remained impossible to fully assess out here in the wreckage. No sterile room. No surgical lights. No bacta chamber waiting to stabilize him. Only her. Only this.

Lumiya exhaled shakily through her nose before reaching into the medkit again with hands that were beginning to tremble from exhaustion. Sealant patches. Coagulants. Stabilizers. All useful. But not enough. Not for this. Her gaze lifted back toward him slowly then, uncertainty flickering across her features for the first time since she had found him.

The Force. The thought settled heavily into place. Healing through it had always felt intimate to her in ways she struggled to explain properly; not commanding the body to obey, but listening to it's suffering closely enough to guide it back toward balance. Small wounds were manageable. Fatigue. Bruising. Minor internal strain. But this was not small. This was standing between someone and death with nothing but her own strength stretched across the distance.

Lumiya shifted carefully, lowering one hand toward the center of his chest just beside the wound while the other steadied against his shoulder. Her breathing slowed deliberately despite the fear pressing hard beneath her ribs now. “I need to try something,” she murmured quietly. There was no room left for hesitation. The Force moved differently this time when she reached for it. Deeper. Warmer. Not surrounding him, but entering the fragile spaces inside him where the damage spread like cracks through glass. She could feel the ruined tissue of the lung struggling desperately to function. Torn vessels. Ragged edges. Blood where air should have been.

Pain lanced through her almost immediately; not physical at first, but empathetic, her body instinctively mirroring enough of his suffering that her breath hitched sharply. Still, she held on. Then carefully - ever so carefully - Lumiya guided the damaged tissue toward itself. Not forcing. Never forcing. But encouraging. Supporting. Coaxing torn structures to reconnect before shock could pull everything apart completely. Her brow tightened with concentration. The effort drained her frighteningly fast. Warmth spread outward beneath her hand in slow pulses through the Force itself, threading between them in ways that no longer felt entirely separate. Her own heartbeat had become strangely loud in her ears now. Heavy. Unsteady. Each breath she drew felt thinner than the last. But the lung was responding. Slightly. Enough. For now.

Lumiya leaned closer unconsciously as the connection deepened, exhaustion pulling at her harder with every passing second. Somewhere inside the strange current moving between them, she became dimly aware of something else beneath Vendryn’s presence; something ancient-feeling and hungry and instinctive brushing against the life she was pouring into him. Not violent. Not deliberate. But there.

Her eyes flickered open slightly, unfocused now from strain. “....Vendryn....” she whispered softly, though whether she meant to warn him, to reassure him, or simply anchor herself to something familiar, even she no longer knew.

Tag: Vendryn Del'therak

 

[Vendryn Del'therak]

Unaware of her internal struggle, Vendryn had finally passed through one of his own. It turns out, cessation of pain is its own kind of pain. There was an aching absence - literally - in his chest, a void that caused his heart to race and his mind to fill with panic, and yet, it was a panic far more manageable for the fact that he was no longer staring at approximately three feet - closer to three and a half - of metal that had previously made itself at home in his chest. There was something wonderfully impersonal about merely bleeding out in comparison.

No more will or won't, no more waiting and wondering. Really, at this point, it was all just about over. Either he would die, or she would perform some kind of... medical miracle and salvage him from death's own doorstep. The immediacy was bracing.

As she sat back, surveying the work ahead of her, he realized something. His eyes tracked the dark bluish splotch that now marred her robes. Robes? There was something important about that, but he didn't have time for it. Like an alarm that played delightful music, he couldn't ignore it but couldn't address it. "Oh, my apologies," he murmured, more of habit than anything else, "I'm afraid I've bled on you. I'll replace them when we have the chance." His eyes flitted over her, inspecting; it wasn't the eyes of a man seeing a woman, it was a look of assessment, categorization, marking out details one by one as if assembling an image of her very mind and soul rather than her body.

He realized, belatedly, that she was thinking. Focusing. Preparing? Meditating. He smiled, and blinked, slowly. Oh so slowly. Now? Truly, now? I am on the brink. Do not allow me to disappoint this woman. He felt himself sinking despite his best efforts. To open his eyes again seemed like such effort. Now that he lacked the focusing aspect of - constant, searing pain, and the faint downward pressure of gravity pulling him against the impalement as if it were trying to split him in half - discomfort and suddenly even relatively comfortable. How long had it been since he slept? How long since he'd dared to close his eyes for more than a moment? How long had he stared at the husk that had once been Captain Gennar? A staunch and loyal man. I hadn't known him well on this voyage, but in the - hours? Days? - I'd hung there, I felt like I had nothing to do but ruminate on how little I'd known him before I killed him. In truth, the crash killed him; he had too little left in him to survive. I simply took what was left for myself. To feel like I was falling, and to reach, and to reach-

Then he felt it. He felt that tendril of warmth, of life, trickling into his veins. For a moment, he was lost in the memory, remembering the twinge of regret he felt at extinguishing the man. Still wondering whether it was regret that it had to be done, or that the man had so little left to give. He remembered the feeling of siphoning that warmth from him. Grabbing onto that thin tendril of life-giving warmth and pulling, pulling-

Wait. I am pulling.

His eyes surged open as he felt his flesh knitting, all four searching about in panic. No. No no no. He saw her, her hand on his chest. Her hand was right where the warmth was coming. He felt his hand clasped atop her own, digging in hard enough that he had pinned it to him, savage, desperate force. Belatedly he realized he was still pulling, and he fought against it. He fought like a man dying of thirst resisting a poisoned canteen. With a swell of effort, he pushed her away from him, pulling her hand from his chest, shoving her backward and trying to scramble away. A fresh surge of agony as he stressed recently healed flesh, even as the traitor energy, the stolen gift mended it back shut. He drew in an enormous breath, feeling his chest swell and fill in a way he thought he would never feel again-

And then abruptly he was on his side, retching, what felt like a never-ending torrent of azure tissue and sapphire blood pouring from his lips, coughing up the very shreds of his soul and his dignity.

Within him, his mind screamed. Have I killed her? Have I slain my savior?

Somehow, I knew I hadn't. I knew she was live. She was in pain, and scared, and-

How did I know?

Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

For a moment, Lumiya didn’t understand what was happening. There was only the sensation of contact - of a connection - snapping suddenly wrong. Her hand was still against him when the Force shifted. Not outward. Not controlled. But pulled. It wasn’t pain in the way that physical injury was pain. It was something deeper; like the moment a thread pulled too tightly through fabric and began to tear it from both sides at once. The healing she had been guiding fractured mid-flow, the carefully held balance collapsing into raw instability as Vendryn recoiled. Her breath caught sharply. “Wait --” she started, but the word never fully formed.

His hand closed over hers. Not gently. The pressure pinned her in place against him, and for half a heartbeat the Force surged between them unfiltered, unmediated, and violently alive. Lumiya felt it immediately: the reversal. The pull. Not just her own energy stabilizing him, but something inside him answering back in instinct rather than intention.

Her vision blurred at the edges. No. The thought wasn’t language. It was reflex. Her body tried to pull back, but the connection was already tangled. What had once been careful guidance became a sudden feedback loop. His panic, her exhaustion; the incomplete healing all folding into the same unstable point.

Then he shoved her away. The rupture broke everything at once.

Lumiya staggered back hard enough that her heel caught against fractured plating. She barely registered the impact. Her hand came free from his chest and the absence hit her like open air after drowning; all too fast, too empty, and too sudden.

The Force didn’t fade. It rebounded. A hollow, sickening rush moved through her system, like something had been yanked loose from inside her rather than outside of her. Her lungs seized in response before she could correct them. She tried to inhale. It didn’t fully work.

Vendryn was retching beside her, the sound distant and warped as her focus narrowed to a single, collapsing point in her awareness. Azure blood. Broken breath. The desert floor tilting slightly under her knees.

Stay upright. The thought came automatically. But it didn’t stay. Her fingers twitched once, as if searching for something to anchor to. There was nothing stable in the sensation anymore; only the echo of contact that refused to settle properly back into silence. And underneath it all; faint but undeniable, that strange second awareness flickered again. Not his pain. Not hers. But something between them.

Lumiya tried to form his name. But it didn’t quite make it out. Her knees hit the ground then, far more gently than she expected. The impact didn’t hurt. That was the first warning. The second was the dimming of sound; Vendryn’s coughing stretching further away, the desert wind flattening into something distant and underwater. Her hand lifted slightly, as if she meant to brace herself. But it never found anything. And then the world folded inward, like a light being turned down rather than extinguished, before she lost consciousness completely.

Tag: Vendryn Del'therak

 

[Vendryn Del'therak]

He drew in one ragged breath after another, fighting to try and lift himself up, straining against the exhaustion that clung to his limbs, the long-denied call of rest that he'd been fighting against as furiously as any battle of his life. He had to do something, he had to make sure she-

He caught sight of her twitching fingers, the pale and bloodless expression on her face. Shock.

Oh, fallen stars, what have I done?

He lurched forward, the movement ungainly and clumsy, slower than he'd expected but faster than the blood rushing to his head could handle as he almost drunkenly launched himself toward her. Hands clasped at her; one grabbing her wrist, two snatching at the front of her robes, yanking her toward him as his last open hand clutched onto a piece of broken decking desperately for support, pulling her forward, toward him, instead of backward onto the hazard of sharp edges and hard plating.

He clutched her to his chest desperately, only the momentary rush of adrenaline - and the flush of stolen life-force - giving him the strength to prevent her from becoming the one in desperate need of medical attention.

He winced as he saw how the blood sticking to his robes began to stain her own garb, slowly drawing back until he could lay her down on a relatively flat piece of floor. His eyes swept their surroundings for a long moment before he spotted the cushioned back of a chair, torn in half from the impact. He reached out with the Force, and the piece launched itself through the air at him. He half-staggered from the blow, hands scrambling to catch it, realizing only belatedly that his lower left hand still clutched at her wrist, relinquishing its grasp only reluctantly. He gently lifted her shoulders and tucked the intact edge of the chair back beneath her head, keeping it elevated. Even that brief exertion had winded him, set his heart racing.

He touched a hand to her throat, feeling for a pulse, frowning at the cerulean mark left behind from his slowly drying blood. As his eyes swept around for her healer's kit, he realized just how much of his blood lay around them, staining everything. Where she lay, one leg sat across a small slick of blood, probably from when she'd pulled him off of the broken railing. His fingers twitched and clawed at the air, uncertainty battling back and forth across his features.

She saved my life. I owe her a debt for that.

Don't I?

Now that he was thinking clearly - well, more clearly - it was easy to identify that she was a Jedi. Or at least a benevolent Force user. A Jedi, who had saved his life. He doubted she knew what he was; he doubted she had cared. She had seen someone in need and come to their aid. Risked her own life and limb to preserve his own, heedless of the danger. How could she not know? How could she not feel the darkness pouring out from him, just as he could feel the radiant light that dwelled within her?

But what am I to do, now? He stared down at her, and a fresh battle began within his heart. She was a Jedi. She may have helped him unknowingly, but if she realized what he was - And how could she not? I nearly stole the life from her heart. - She would strike him down... And he was far too weak to defend himself. Would she kill someone she had so recently saved? He couldn't imagine a world in which a Jedi, seeing a powerful Sith brought so low and vulnerable, could simply turn away from their bared throat. To leave such darkness alive to cause more harm, to bring more darkness into the galaxy. And yet, he couldn't imagine this gentle soul taking up her blade to snuff out the candle she had so carefully preserved.

He stole back his hand, staring down at her prostrate form. He wasn't sure if it was minutes or moments that had passed that he had stared at her before resolution flickered over his features. The battle had been won; a decision had been made, no matter how it ached.

He reached for her small healer's kit, rooting about within it - after taking a moment to clean his hands as well as he could upon one of the cloths within - until he came to the small blades and sutures within the kit. He reached down, fingers brushing against the clinical steel...

After briefly checking her over to make sure she didn't have a weapon close at hand, he reached down and planted his upper left hand on her chest, his lower hands reaching out to pin her wrists, his upper right hand coming down to her neck, bracing himself for a moment and then...

With a hard twist, he snapped open the tiny plastic capsule with his fingers, the air suddenly filling with the harsh, chemical scent of ammonia as he activated the smelling salts. His expression twisted into a grimace from the intense and terrible smell, carefully bracing himself to prevent her from moving too rashly and injuring herself. Or injuring me.

Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

The first thing Lumiya became aware of was smell. Sharp, bitter, and chemical enough that it cut straight through the heavy darkness clinging to her thoughts like a blade. Her face twisted instinctively before consciousness fully returned. A weak sound escaped her somewhere between a cough and a protest as her body reacted before her mind caught up. Air rushed abruptly back into her lungs, uneven and shallow at first. The world followed slowly after it; fractured light, cold metal beneath her, distant desert wind filtering through torn hull plating. And pressure. Pressure by hands.

Her eyes opened immediately. For one disoriented heartbeat she simply stared upward without understanding what she was seeing; four sapphire eyes above her, unfamiliar closeness, blood staining everything between them in deep blue-black streaks. Then awareness crashed back all at once. Vendryn.

Lumiya jerked instinctively beneath his grip, panic flashing across her features before pain and exhaustion hit half a second later hard enough to stop the movement before it properly began. Her breath caught sharply. One of her hands twisted reflexively against where he held her wrist before she forced herself still through sheer effort alone.

The Force between them was wrong now. Not hostile. Not violent. But worse somehow. Tangled. She could still feel traces of him beneath her skin like warmth left behind after touching something too hot for too long. The memory of the connection lingered in unsettling fragments; the pull, the panic, the impossible sensation of something inside him reaching instinctively toward the life that she had offered.

Lumiya swallowed hard against the lingering nausea rolling through her chest. Her pulse fluttered unevenly beneath the hand he had pressed against her throat moments earlier. For several long seconds she said nothing at all. Then, quietly strained and still catching her breath, she managed: “....you smell terrible.” The words arrived with such exhausted sincerity that they almost sounded serious.

A weak breath of something dangerously close to laughter escaped her immediately afterward before dissolving into another cough. Her eyes squeezed shut briefly against the dizziness that followed. When they reopened, the fear from earlier had settled into something quieter now; a wary confusion rather than alarm. Only then did she seem to fully register the way he was holding her down.

Lumiya blinked once. Slowly. “Vendryn,” she said softly, voice rough around the edges now. “If you were planning to murder me, I think reviving me first was a very strange choice.” Despite the words, she didn’t actually sound afraid of him. Confused, certainly. Exhausted beyond reason. But beneath both of those things lingered the same gentle steadiness that had led her to help him in the first place, even now when instinct probably should have told her otherwise.

Her gaze shifted briefly toward the blue blood staining both of them before returning to him again. Some of the color returned faintly to her expression as understanding slowly pieced itself together. “You pushed me away,” she murmured quietly, more realization than accusation. “You stopped yourself.” The statement lingered between them for a moment before her brow tightened faintly, sensing the conflict written all across him now that she was awake enough to see it properly.

And softly, with tired honesty that bypassed fear entirely, Lumiya asked: “Why do you look more frightened than I am?”

Tag: Vendryn Del'therak

 

[Vendryn Del'therak]

When she came around, he flicked the smelling salts away with perhaps more than necessary force, cringing from the smell of it.

Once her struggles ceased, he gave her a very tentative smile. "Perhaps that is the salts," he answered her, as gently as if he was afraid to break what fragile peace lingered between them. A pause, and then he spoke again, "I was concerned that... Now you knew what I was... You might..." A pause. "Change your mind. Or else simply lash out from being awoken."

His touch lingered for several seconds longer before gently releasing her, his hands hovering over her wrists as if he expected betrayal. Not just as a precaution, but truly expected her to try and kill him.

"I... Should not kill you," he murmured to her, the words sounding more confused than he had when he was impaled. "Because you saved my life." It was the obvious thing, so why did it seem to strain him so? Why was his tone so querulous, so uncertain? Perhaps because he expected she would not have done the same in his position.

Perhaps because that's what he would have done. But not this time.

He rubbed his wrist, as if realizing that he had held her down too firmly. As if an echo of the sensation of being held. He stared at her for several long seconds, unspeaking, his lower hands twitching uncertainly at his sides, before he finally spoke, his voice a rasping whisper. "I stopped myself. I should not have started. I should have let you do what you could, then part ways. So you would not need learn what you had saved. So you would not feel-" He stopped, mid-sentence, and gave a small, shuddering sigh, "Responsible." A pause. "If we simply parted ways, you would never know. I wouldn't have to kill you. You wouldn't have to kill me. Or to try." His voice was barely a whisper, by the end. He slowly backed away from her, hands moving to brace himself up against the wreckage. He made as if to walk away... But the trembling in his legs undermined him, and instead he settled to the floor a few feet away.

He didn't address the phantom soreness; his logical mind carefully tucked it away behind thought, rationalizing it and burying it.

Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

Lumiya watched him carefully as he backed away from her; the trembling in his legs far more revealing than the distance he tried to create between them. For a moment after he spoke, she said nothing at all. The silence settled softly between the fractured remains of the wreckage; broken only by the distant moan of desert wind threading through twisted metal.

Then her gaze drifted downward briefly toward where her lightsaber rested nearby against the decking. The pale hilt had rolled loose sometime during the chaos, lying half-stained with blue blood beneath the fractured emergency lighting. Such a small thing, really. So much fear wrapped around an object she had spent most of her life trying not to use. Lumiya had carried it because Jedi carried lightsabers. Because the galaxy expected one at her side. But healing had always come more naturally to her than violence ever had. Even now, exhausted and vulnerable beside a man who believed she should want him dead, her first instinct was still to save rather than strike.

Her eyes lifted back to him slowly. “Vendryn,” she said quietly, his name carrying no anger within it, only tired sincerity. “I didn’t help you because I thought you earned it.” A faint pause followed as she steadied herself upright against the wreckage behind her. Every movement still felt heavier than it should have. “And I didn’t help you because I believed you were harmless.” Her gaze flicked meaningfully toward the space between them where the memory of the Force still felt tangled and unresolved. “I helped you because you were dying.” The words remained simple. Unadorned. But utterly genuine.

Lumiya studied him for another long moment after that, watching the confusion strain against instincts he seemed unable to fully reconcile. You wouldn’t have to kill me. You wouldn’t have to kill me. The fact he spoke of it so matter-of-factly unsettled her far more deeply than the threat itself. A small furrow touched her brow. “You keep speaking as though this ends with one of us murdering the other,” she murmured softly. “But I’m not trying to kill you.” Her voice remained frustratingly calm about it, almost gentle despite the absurdity. “And despite everything that just happened....” Her tired eyes lowered briefly toward the blood still staining both of them before returning to his again. “....you’re very clearly trying not to kill me.” And that mattered. Perhaps more than either of them fully understood yet.

The Force between them still felt strange; stretched thin in some places, while knotted tightly in others. Lumiya could feel fragments of him now in ways she instinctively knew were not entirely natural. Panic. Hunger. Shame. And beneath it all, something startlingly fragile for someone who carried darkness so heavily within himself. Not weakness. Never that. But loneliness so old it had calcified.

Slowly, carefully, she drew one knee upward beneath herself and leaned back against the ruined plating behind her with a quiet exhale. She looked exhausted now that the adrenaline had finally burned itself away. Pale. Shaking slightly beneath the effort of remaining conscious. But still watching him with that same impossible softness that he seemed unable to understand. “You saved me too,” she said after a while. Her eyes drifted briefly toward the place where he had shoved her away before the connection could consume more than either of them intended. “You stopped.” The words lingered quietly between them. Not absolution. Not denial of what he was. Just acknowledgment that, at the critical moment, he had chosen restraint over instinct. And perhaps for someone like Vendryn, that choice cost more than Lumiya could fully comprehend.

A faint breath escaped her then; almost a tired laugh, though softer this time. “Besides,” she added gently, “if I planned to kill every difficult patient I treated...” Her gaze flicked briefly toward the enormous hole that had very recently existed through his chest. “....you would not be my first concern.”

Tag: Vendryn Del'therak

 

[Vendryn Del'therak]

His gaze remained on her, suspicion and hope entwining. He didn't address her naivete; a Jedi and a Sith working together was an unlikely thing without grave external pressure. Unless she expected repayment of some kind? A reward for her service? There was no way she could have known of him; this wreck was far too sudden and unexpected for it to be part of someone's plan, and even if they had come for him, a wise person would have extorted their payment before removing the spike from his chest. It would be a much stronger negotiating position.

"...Fine," he stated, reluctantly. His tone was formal, the agony of his entrapment and the awkwardness of the situation buried beneath the rote habit of negotiation. Clearly he was accustomed to very transactional relationships. "Thank you, Lumiya, for saving my life. Such an act of generosity should not go unrewarded. I have access to substantial... resources, and can compensate you upon my safe return to..." He paused, the silence dragging out. He didn't even know what planet this was, much less the state of it. Who did it belong to? Was it in Republic hands? Or Sith hands? Or, worse, Mandalorian? The best he could hope for is an unaligned world, somewhere he could discreetly arrange transportation home. If this world belonged to a fellow Sith, or one of his rivals, this might be a very dangerous place, indeed. "... Somewhere I can find a way home." He finished, after far too long of a gap. His eyes discreetly searched his surroundings, but he couldn't catch sight of the silver and sapphire hilt of his lightsaber. The Force ached far too much for him to use it to explore his surroundings, and his grimace twisted with frustration at his own weakness.

He couldn't even remember if it had been at his hip, or in his quarters, when he had gone to the bridge; the hours before their sudden disruption irritatingly vague, razor-sharp images like the illumination of lightning, followed by patches of clinging darkness. A concussion was likely.

"How... long ago was the crash?" He asked her after a moment, licking his lips. When did they become so dry? Without the distraction of his impalement, it was hard to ignore the other plights of his body. Even though his breathing was still strained from healing such a terrible wound, his stomach twisted in on itself like a serpent, biting at the empty places within him.

"I feel like I have not eaten or drank in... a very long time." Truth be told, the time he spent hanging from that railing had bled together; it was impossible to tell if it had been an hour or a day, or any stretch between.

Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

Lumiya blinked slowly as he launched into what sounded suspiciously like a formal negotiation. For a moment she simply stared at him. Then a faint, tired smile appeared. "Vendryn," she said softly, "you do realize most people just say thank you." The smile lingered for only a second before exhaustion pulled it quieter again. "I didn't save you for a reward." Her gaze drifted briefly toward the torn hull above them where fading light filtered through fractured metal. Dust moved lazily through the air between them. "And if I'm being honest, I don't think either of us is currently in a position to negotiate anything."

The observation felt difficult to argue with. He had very recently been impaled. She had very recently fainted. Between them, the wreckage looked as though a small war had occurred.

At his question, Lumiya frowned thoughtfully. "I don't know exactly," she admitted. "A few hours at least. Maybe longer." Her eyes lowered briefly toward the blue blood staining the deck around them. "You weren't exactly checking a chronometer when I found you." The attempt at humor was gentle, but real.

Then she noticed the way his attention kept drifting through the wreck. Searching. Her expression softened slightly. "You're thirsty." It wasn't really a question. "And hungry." Again, she stated the obvious. Slowly she pushed herself upright, one hand bracing against a twisted support beam while she waited for the dizziness to pass. "There are supplies at my camp," she said. "Water. Some ration packs. Nothing exciting." Her gaze shifted toward the deeper sections of the wreck. "Or we can look around here first. This ship is large enough that there may be intact stores somewhere." A small pause followed as she observed him, considering the risk that leaving him could be. "Though considering our luck so far, we'd probably find another impaled passenger before we found a kitchen." The words were delivered with complete sincerity before she realized how they sounded.

Lumiya sighed quietly and rubbed a hand across her forehead. "My sense of humor gets worse when I'm tired." Still, she glanced back toward him. "But it's your choice. Search the wreck, or head back to camp." She asked him not because she owed him the decision. But because, for perhaps the first time since she'd found him hanging from that railing, he was healthy enough to actually make one.

Tag: Vendryn Del'therak

 

[Vendryn Del'therak]

He looked at her oddly. Just say thank you? Now there was confusion visible, flickering across his features like static. He frowned and shook it off, clearly uncertain how to deal with it. "How... Far is your camp?" He peered deeper into the wreckage. "I am not certain I am up to a long trek, at this moment. Perhaps we should search deeper in."

At her concern, he shook his head. "No... The crew are all accounted for. The Engineering spaces were struck by a torpedo, with all hands. The rest of the crew had their stations here, aboard the bridge. Perhaps... if my quarters are intact, there may be things I can recover there, as well. I do not recall what was in my possession or left therein; my memory of events even preceding the attack are... unclear." He twitched with a grimace. Even recalling the attack was clearly painful. And something like... shame?

"Nonetheless," he cleared his throat loudly, though the sound had a wet edge of pain to it that reminded them both he had quite recently been impaled, "I will see to it that you are properly rewarded. Such... selfless dedication should always have..." He realized how hollow his words sounded. It wasn't that long ago he was admitting that, if their positions were reversed, he might have killed her. "... Well, I will ensure your acts do not go unanswered. Such courage, at least, requires acknowledgement."

He looked her over after a moment, a brow quirked, and something bordering playfulness in his tone. "Unless you were simply here to loot the wreckage, in which case such a lack of focus is terrible." He gave her a pained smile, clearly trying to indicate his words were meant to be humorous.

After a moment, the smile dropped, "Though I would imagine given the state of the rightful crew, it's not looting, it's salvage, now... I don't think this will ever leave the surface again. The damage was far too severe."

Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

Lumiya regarded him for a moment as he continued trying to explain why she deserved compensation for not letting him die.The more he spoke, the more convinced she became that he genuinely did not know what to do with simple kindness. The realization was far more troubling than anything else he had said. "You are remarkably determined about this," she observed quietly. There was no judgment in her words. Only mild a bewilderment.

Before he could continue the argument, she pushed herself fully upright and dusted rust-colored grit from her robes. "My camp is far enough that I wouldn't enjoy carrying you there if you collapsed halfway," she admitted. "So perhaps searching here first is the sensible option." Her eyes drifted toward the deeper interior of the wreck. "If your quarters survived, they may have emergency stores. Water, at least."

Lumiya took a few careful steps forward, testing her balance. The dizziness had mostly faded now, leaving behind only the deep exhaustion that seemed determined to settle into every muscle she possessed.

Behind her, the ruined bridge stretched away into fractured corridors and collapsed compartments. Dim emergency lighting flickered weakly in places where power somehow still lingered.

At his attempt at humor, the faintest smile appeared. "Good. I was worried that you might be developing a personality." The expression vanished almost immediately afterward, though a trace of amusement remained in her eyes. Then she turned and began making her way toward one of the adjoining passageways.

The corridor beyond had partially collapsed years ago. Twisted support beams hung overhead, forcing her to duck beneath them as she moved deeper into the wreckage. Dust coated everything. Every step sent faint echoes through the metal skeleton of the ship. "Though for the record," she called back over one shoulder, "if I had come here intending to loot the dead, I would have chosen a much less dangerous wreck."

A few moments later she spotted what looked like an intact storage compartment further ahead. Her attention fixed onto it immediately. Which was precisely why she failed to notice the bent section of durasteel hanging several centimeters lower than the rest of the ceiling. The impact produced a very solid metallic thunk. Lumiya stopped dead, silent for a moment or two. Then she slowly lifted a hand to the top of her head. "...Ow." For a brief moment she simply stood there staring at the offending piece of metal as though personally betrayed by it. The Force offered no wisdom whatsoever.

After another second, she sighed. "I am choosing to believe nobody saw that." And then, rubbing the sore spot atop her head with all the dignity she could recover, Lumiya continued toward the storage compartment as though nothing had happened.

Tag: Vendryn Del'therak