B. Goode

[Kenth Typho]

~Tatooine~​

~Tatoo System~​

There comes a time a boy finds himself on the crossroad between two distinct paths, one leads to maturity. You become your own man, make the hard choices and learn to live with them. The other leads to self-jerking, doubts and sticking to being a little kid, all about me, me and me.

But life ain’t about you and it ain’t about what you want, learned that lesson early on while working the fields and running dem errands. I am a Coldwell Boy, and even though my pa was a good for nuthin’-coward, he taught me one thing well.

It’s all about family, the name was all that mattered and it was our duty to cherish it, so the next generation wouldn’t be born into disgrace.

Didn’t work out so well in the end though.

Funny how those things work, no? Pa was always good with dem words, but execution… that’s what the fella had always missed. Nothing no good sharp razor to the throat don’t fix though.

So here I am now, standing in front of my old home. Lived here for thirty-two years and now it’s burning. The heat washed over my skin, drying up any transpiration that might have gathered.

The two stars were slowly tracing their last journey for the day, one of them had already settled beyond the horizon and the other one was making its final round. Would not be long before the burning fires would turn into the only source of light for miles to come.

Smoke rose up. Tendrils curling into themselves as they traveled from the house to the open fields, and the Coldwell boy looked on as the ashes of his past was scattered by the winds.

It would take hours before the house would cave in and I didn’t have the time, so after a last look I turned around. A speeder was waiting behind me and with some luck, I would be able to avoid the Sand People and get to Mos Eisley safely.

 

[Alkesh Vizsla]

Mos Eisley. As a girl she’d thought it the center of the universe. The one little podunk cantina town was the busiest place she knew, almost dizzying compared to the open space surrounding their homestead further in to the desert. Going in to town with her Father (back in the days he hadn’t been so pathetic) had always been a treat. As the youngest and the only girl she was doted on, perhaps a contributing factor to her firey, somewhat spoiled personality.

Nowadays, Mos Eisley was nice for its memories and not much else. The first time she’d smuggled something off-planet she’d been amazed at the sheer size of the spaceport she’d landed on, the amount of people bustling around. Her life had been so small in every way, trapped on a desert planet who’s busiest town spread a mile at best. Comfortable just about anywhere, Elia had no problem with wide open spaces or the choked overpopulation of Nar Shaddaa or Coruscant. But it’d become hard for her to stay in one place, and even harder to be completely comfortable at home knowing what she was missing out there.

But before she could leave, there had been…business to attend to.

Nursing a whiskey, she rested her elbows on the bar in the single cantina available. There were other places to drink of course, but she’d have twice the unwanted advances at any of those establishments. She had little to do but wait for Griffin, rotating the glass on its edge and watching a few more patrons trickle in as the suns started to set. She wished he’d hurry up – she wanted to hear every detail.

[member="Griffin Coldwell"]​

 

[Kenth Typho]

[member="Elia Coldwell"]

A cloud of dust scattered up as the doors of the cantina banged open, for a single moment they obscured anything and everything of the new soul, except his boots. A single speck of red marred the old weathered leather, an indicator of what kind of man their wearer was perhaps. Slowly the dust cloud settled down and the man behind it became more apparent.

***​

I could feel the eyes settle down on me, hard eyes, soft eyes, some of them averted their gaze immediately once they realized who had come to town, others were measuring, pondering. In their mind they were weighing the exact odds of them being able to take me and mine, but in the end stronger minds prevailed.

Or perhaps pa had always been right and it was truly the name that counted. Seemed that even now after everything that had happened, the Coldwell boys still got their dues. I walked into the cantina and immediately a drink was settled down on the table.

They still remember, still know the feeling of cold sweat running down their spine at the sheer mention of the Coldwells.

It would pass eventually, they were leaving, all of them knew it. It was in their eyes, the weak, the strong and the middle ones. Averted or not, they all knew the time of the Coldwells was over here on Tatooine.

But respect was given nonetheless.

People were tired, why make a fuss when ya can see ‘em walk away and then spit on their legacy with a safe distance?

Took the drink, walked over to the sis and settled down in front of her. Didn’t say a word, simply leaned into the chair and took a good breath. The journey had been uneventful and yet… I felt tired to the bone.

 

[Alkesh Vizsla]

Elia took to being feared and hated like a fish to water – she’d always known how to swim those seas. She didn’t need people to like her. She only needed them to listen. And they did; she had a natural charisma that made the weak eager for the anchor of her certainty and the strong willing to hear her opinions. And her opinions usually became fact, at least in her experience thus far. She wasn’t naïve enough to believe she’d leave Tatooine and the rest of the galaxy would bow at her feet.

At least not immediately.

When Griffin entered she didn’t have to look up to know it was him. The atmosphere of the room soured even further, including him in the thick divide that cut between Coldwells and the rest of the planet.

He sat and never said a word as was his custom, a mildly infuriating habit when he must bear such news, but one she’d learned to live with. Her drink was half gone anyway so she threw the rest of it back before pushing her glass to the edge of the table where the bartender would see it was empty. It didn’t remain in that state for more than a few seconds and she swilled amber until the keep was away. Family business was private.

“So…” she asked, looking at him expectantly. “Is it done?”

[member="Griffin Coldwell"]​

 

[Kenth Typho]

[member="Elia Coldwell"]

Razored edge cutting into the weakened skin, deep cut, blood welled up almost immediately and the distinct sound of gurgling filled my ears.

A quick death for all intents and purposes. A fate undeserving for the likes of his pa, yet he had done it swiftly all the same. This hadn’t been for the pleasure, it hadn’t been for justice, it had simply been consequences.

Bloodying his knuckles on his father hadn’t even come to mind.

The glass was heavy in the hand, but it washed away some of the soreness in the bones and that was really all that mattered for now.

Is it done?

Liquid courage for some, liquid pacifier for others. She had always been a little spitfire, their Elia. Little patience, but always striving for what was best for their family, he loved her above all.

And now? They were the only ones left.

His eyes settled on hers, they didn’t waver as he emptied the glass and put it back on the table. A few more moments passed before he finally gave her a short nod.

It was done.

 

[Alkesh Vizsla]

The short nod didn’t give much away besides affirmation. In most situations she knew him well enough to extrapolate his feelings surrounding certain situations simply by the way he nodded his head, or the slight crease in his features. But in this she was mystified. They’d obviously never been in a situation quite like this – how was she supposed to interpret how he felt without precedent?

Pursing her lips together briefly, she stilled the scowl that threatened to appear on her face.

“That’s it? A nod?” She wanted to hear everything. She wanted to know if their dear old Dad had begged, had promised to put down the bottle and get back on his feet like so many times before. If he wept and said he’d stop embarrassing them, besmirching the family name if only they’d let him live. That’s the way she would have done it – he didn’t deserve to go peacefully, without knowing she was ashamed of him. But she couldn’t say how her brother had done it. He was always practical, straight to the point. He got things done and he got them done very well. For all she knew he’d finished it before their Pa had even known something was happening.

“You know what, nevermind,” she said with a frustrated edge, intending to hog him when they were away from a dozen ears. Even if they were leaving it wouldn’t do to have their laundry out in the air.

“Cecil has the ship ready whenever we are. I want to get out of this wasteland as soon as possible. I say after this drink.” She wasn’t sure what she’d do if he said he had something else to attend to, one last loose end, one more unruly thread to pluck.

[member="Griffin Coldwell"]​

 

[Kenth Typho]

[member="Elia Coldwell"]

‘No, I am done here.’ the slow rumble of his voice brought on, almost as if her brother had read her mind in terms of what she was thinking. Perhaps they had known each other simply for so long that it became practically second nature to read the slightly downward cast lip, or the upturn in her shoulder as if to prepare for a long argument to come.

But Griff was done here, literally so, there had been a reason why was forced to wait for him as long as she did. Suffice to say that the Jawas had understood the message relayed to them in his old fashioned ways. A few more ponders arrived, pa hadn’t been in pain, just as Elia had thought Griff had simply come from the back and cut his throat before the old man had even known what was happening.

Practical, quick and in the end less worries for anyone involved. Some would call Coldwell uncreative, but that ain’t the truth of the matter. He simply thought things through a few steps in the future, with no emotions clouding his mind.

He drank up the refilled glass and put it down again, his hand still wrapped around the glass implied that he no longer had a taste. Instead Griff simply waited.

For either Elia to drink up her own liquid courage, or for any of the many enemies currently sitting in the bar to drink up theirs.

 

[Alkesh Vizsla]

No irritation at her shortness, no impertinent look when she harried him. Always stoic. Sometimes it made her even angrier, but most of the time her brother’s solid-as-a-rock personality was the only thing that kept her from flying off the handle and destroying everything around her. Nodding with satisfaction at her answer and seeing he didn’t go for another drink, she threw the rest of hers back with a practiced motion that spoke to just how much she could put back. She’d always had to keep up with the rest of the boys.

Setting the glass down, she lifted herself from her seat. “Let’s get out of here then, brother,” she said, eager to get to the ship where it’d be safe to ask him for details.

“Oi, Coldwell.”

It seemed their exit would not be so easy as she’d hoped, that liquid courage coming to make a mess of best-laid plans. She didn’t recognize the drunkard at the bar but that wasn’t necessarily surprising. Far more people knew of them than they knew of people.

“Heard you were shipping out.”

She sneered at the stranger. It was no secret they were moving their holdings – things had been shipping through Mos Eisley for the last few months. One would have to be blind to miss it.

“What’s it to you?”

“Oh nothing,” the man said with a look that implied that couldn’t be further from the truth. “Just seems a shame to let you get away,” he said, the metallic sound of a switchblade flicked out loud in the stillness that had settled over the cantina.

[member="Griffin Coldwell"]​

 

[Kenth Typho]

[member="Elia Coldwell"]

Any other place the patrons would have been filing out by now, keen on getting in the last drips of their drinks, drop the money owed and then leave the establishment before they were involved in something hairy. But this ain’t no regular place, place like this had the hard men, the named men and sometimes… the stupid men.

Some eyes were sizing up the drunkard in his, comparably, small switchblade, others were taking in the sight of Miss Coldwell in her fury- a pleasant sight to some perhaps, mostly the ones who had dipped into their drinks too much already.

But most, the majority? They were right up staring at Mister Coldwell.

And he wasn’t showing nothing, his finger traced a circle across the edge of his glass, almost absent-mindedly as Griff pondered the implications of this. Point was, they had a reputation to preserve.

Didn’t matter if they were leaving.

Building up a name was difficult, but breaking it? That was easy.

Which wasn’t to say he didn’t have enough blood spilled for one day already though, that was the difference between him and the rest. (amongst other things)

He’d do what needed to be done, didn’t mean he would enjoy it.

‘Billy.’ boulders of stone slowly being grinded to dust, that was the impression of his voice carrying across the room. ‘I know where your sonny lives.’

And just like that the situation had changed, just like that the atmosphere grew colder than it had already been. Because this wasn’t a gamble between two lives anymore, now Griffin was saying that when he was done with Billy…

Well, do the math.

 

[Alkesh Vizsla]

It’d be easy to assume that Elia needed her brother to do the heavy lifting for her.

In all actuality, he was the one that always stopped her from taking things farther than they needed to go. Which, if she were being truthful, was wholly necessary. She got them in to trouble. She had a reputation for brutality when things went south that meant those men enjoying the view as she rankled at ‘Billy’ were decidedly stupid and/or suicidal. If the idiot looking to try his hand at offing her went for it she had knives of her own. If he even got that close – she was pretty handy with a blaster.

But Billy seemed to pause at the sound of Griff’s voice, a monster's rumble from behind Elia, the threat that wasn’t outright said but couldn’t be missed. There was a lot of evil in the galaxy. Maybe more evil than good. Every kind of evil had its lines it wouldn’t cross, and most families that ran in the business theirs did would leave kids alone. Women too unless they were directly involved. There was some strange notion of honor, a callback to bygone days when you did things the ‘right’ way. Not the Coldwells. No one was safe. If you crossed them you would die, and then everyone you cared about would die.

Billy didn’t have to wonder if it was an empty threat.

He seemed to consider just doing it anyway but decided better, even drunk, making a disgruntled noise before slouching out of the cantina without making eye contact. He knew better than to stay.

Elia stood there for a minute, sort of hoping someone else was drunk enough to try it, but was disappointed. Instead she just turned to her brother and sighed. “Alright. I guess we can go now.”

[member="Griffin Coldwell"]​

 

[Kenth Typho]

[member="Elia Coldwell"]

It ain’t no secret that the women of the Coldwell Family were no jokes to carry around, starting out from the great, great, great, great grandma Bethany, who had defended the original Coldwell Manor from a Sand People incursion with a broken hip, two shotguns and her little dog Betsy.

All the way up to Spitfire Lia, who… well. Heh. I ain’t needed to properly describe why she was called that, anyway. That’s the entire thing about reputation, it took ya ways that most people didn’t even comprehend until it was far too late, whilst Billy was smart enough to realize when a threat was real.

There were people who weren’t as smart or perhaps they simply didn’t have anything to lose, either way.

One of the guys in the corner suddenly jumped up, reaching for his blaster and screaming something about not letting us Coldwells get away with things. See, I can be pretty intimidating sometimes, I suppose.

But I ain’t some kind of God, wasn’t really all that good with blasters either.

 

[Alkesh Vizsla]

Elia was no god either – she was little and had little in the way of physical combat prowess. Her line of work however, required her to be able to defend herself and more and so she’d gotten pretty handy with a blaster just so she could fight someone off before they could close enough to engage her.

Her hand had been floating over the place where hers was holstered – subtly, as in all truth for once she’d rather just go than fight if it meant getting off this planet – so when the man in the corner raised his she was almost as quick on the draw.

Griffin was cool intimidation, Elia was destructive fire, and together they balanced perfectly.

“Griff!” she called, more out of habit to alerting him to a threat than anything else. The man with the gun wasn’t exactly being subtle after all. She turned on her heel for cover behind the booth they’d just been seated at before twisting her head and arm out to pull the trigger and plant a bolt right between their attacker’s eyes. He fell backwards, overturning the table he and his buddies had been sitting out in a great loud crash, mugs shattering and cheap alcohol splashing everywhere in a hurricane of displaced sabacc cards.

She waited for the momentary cacophony to subside before appearing from cover. “Anyone else?” Green eyes made brighter by the rush of adrenaline, she waited for someone stupid enough to try either of them. But nobody did. Turning, she made her way straight for the door without hesitating a moment longer.

“Let’s get off this karking poodoohole.”

[member="Griffin Coldwell"]​

 

[Kenth Typho]

[member="Elia Coldwell"]

Nobody would see Griffin Coldwell jumping out of his chair to hide behind or beneath the table when a firefight starts out, a name’s all ya got these days and Griff wasn’t ready to throw that away, not even for his own life. ‘Sides, it ain’t like he would have been able to jump away in time, before the bad, bad man was able to get out a shot, so he sat and took another lasting sip from the bottle this time.

Seemingly wholly unconcerned that a guy was about to shoot them, whilst in reality… he had simply accepted that there wasn’t anything he could do. Griff couldn’t reach out across the room and punch the bastard in the throat, he didn’t have a gun and even if he didn’t? Would probably have hit his sister, instead of doing something useful.

So as always? He trusted in his sister to solve the problems he couldn’t handle, it was why they were a perfect team.

Cold intimidating mixed with destructive fire.

‘Quite so.’ he calmly stated, as he put down the bottle and walked out of the room after her, with no looks taken back. As the distance grew and they left the filth behind them, Griff stopped Elia, his big hand firmly placed on her shoulder as he gently turned around.

Those eyes looked in hers, the subtlest upwards turn in the corner of his mouth.

And then Griff said more words in one sentence than he usually did in a whole.

‘I am proud of you, little sister.’

 

[Alkesh Vizsla]

It took much of her energy not to stop on a dime and look at him in utter disbelief when he spoke over three words in one utterance. Her brother was very, very far from stupid, but he chose his words sparingly. She supposed he was just the most economical person she knew in terms of just about everything – never waste a word, movement, or thought.

Because Elia was hogging all of them.

There was a softness only elicited by Griff and even then in small doses when she caught the almost imperceptible upturn of the corners of his mouth, returning her own. “Well, I learned from the best.” She reached up to the shoulder he had a hand around, wrapping her fingers around his and pulling his hand to her mouth, a kiss on fingers she’d seen covered in blood more times than she could count. She convinced herself to move on.

The soft expression was gone as soon as they reached the spaceport, her expression rearranged to its usual disdain for anyone who didn’t work for them.

Once on their ship, the doors closed, no one else to hear them – she pressed. “Waste your allotment of words for the day and tell me what really happened. Tell me if he begged.” She took a seat behind the controls though it was obvious all her attention was focused on him.

[member="Griffin Coldwell"]​

 

[Kenth Typho]

Griffin was not a man that enjoyed complications, she knew this, he knew this. It was an attitude that pervaded into his every being, every path and every decision he made was attuned to it, and so they both already knew that Griff had dealt with their father the only way he knew how.

But when someone else would have received a look from the man for asking questions they already knew the answer to, Elia deserved better than that.

‘I killed him, El.’ Griff said, scratching his chin and leaning back against the seat to ponder about the words said. He had killed him, still could feel the blood clinging to his hands and the sound of thin fabric rubbed against the razor’s edge, to clean it up. Pa had always told him to clean his tools after being done.

‘Razor to his throat, didn’t even know what was happening and was gone before he could realize it.’

It escaped his lips and immediately Griff wished he could take it back. Elia was the hot-blood of the two of them, it meant that in fury? She would unleash hell upon anything that threatened either one of them, but it also meant that she felt deeper.

She wished their pa dead now, wished to hear him scream. Would that feeling last? Grif did not think so, and yet she had surprised him on many an occasion already.

‘He did not suffer, El.’ Griffin raised his gaze from his hands and cemented it on her eyes, a challenge to her. She would know.

[member="Elia Coldwell"]

 

[Alkesh Vizsla]

She didn't look back at him as she plugged in the last of the coordinates, piecing together the image of the confrontation as it was described to her. It wasn't what she'd wanted to imagine.

Their father had never done one thing in particular. There was no defining moment of abuse, no promise broken, no outright betrayal. No, she thought as she brought the ship off the ground and towards atmosphere in silence. She hated him specifically because he'd been underwhelming. She almost wished he'd done something heinous - at least then he'd be deserving of the name he'd stopped caring about the second he fell in love with the bottle.

She wanted him to suffer because he was unworthy.

The simmer didn't start roiling until they'd left Tatooine's atmosphere and she could hit autopilot. Then she turned on her brother with all the fire she was famous for.

"He didn't suffer? That's not what I said." That it'd been a mutual plan wasn't mentioned. She'd brought it up. The onus for this death was hers. But Griff knew how she'd wanted that pathetic sack of poodoo to die. Lifting herself from her seat, she stalked towards him, her tone barbed. "Just for once, just for fething once, you could have gone out of your way to do a little more than the bare requirement! He didn't deserve mercy or economy Griff - he deserved to have enough time to lay there in his own blood and realize he wasted an entire lifetime, that he'll be left out of his own legacy!"

She'd reached him well before she was finished, reaching with two hands to shove him as hard as she could, knowing it'd have little effect on her brick wall of a brother but pissed enough to want to hurt him. When she was angry she said and did things she didn't mean - she burned down whole villages in her fury. "It's a good thing the place burned down or people would start saying you're too much of a coward to get your hands good and dirty!"

[member="Griffin Coldwell"]

 

[Kenth Typho]

[member="Elia Coldwell"]

And as she tried to push him away, she would see a flickering and suddenly Elia was pressed against Griffin’s chest, his arms wrapped around her and giving her a hug. They had never been a family that consisted of the traditional values of family, loyalty had always been important, keeping the name intact and working it up, be strong and work hard, those were the things that had mattered.

Love had never really been in the entire equation.

But Grif and Elia only had had each other, with a mother dead and a pa never functional, things grow even when your folks don’t teach ya how to do the normal things. He knew what she felt, because it had been also in his cold heart.

They might be cold.

Might be ruthless.

But they were Coldwells.

His big hand stroked her back and for once Griff allowed himself to express what he felt for his little big sister, just for once he would be there for her.

“Never did care what those moister farmers thought of us, sis.” even more words, where was this coming from?

 

[Alkesh Vizsla]

Elia knew anger best. It was an emotion that came easily and burned every other feeling out of existence. It kept things simple, most of the time. She’d learned more professional and varied methods of violence from her surroundings but she’d been born with a temper white-hot and unforgiving.

It was that, above all else, that led to the development of what she felt for Griff.

He was capable of such impregnable stoicism it was incredible, and often she thought he’d cultivated such an attitude simply to get her goat. She was giving herself too much credit for the development of a man who’d become such out of necessity, out of a need for precision in a family prone to blasting what they didn’t like out of the way, but her near-constant rage was at least part of the wellspring that weathered the path of the man.

For a moment she was stunned in to silence, standing awkwardly in his embrace as she tried to decide whether to hug him back or slit his throat as he’d done to their Pa. Both were tempting and not mutually exclusive.

“You’re wasting your allotment of words on things that don’t mean poodoo to me,” she snapped back, deciding on the latter as she brought her hands up to try and leverage her way out of his arms. She was prone to saying things she didn’t mean when she was mad, and whatever they were was fair game. “Let me go Griffin!"

[member="Griffin Coldwell"]​