Can't Break The Habit

[Zef Halo]

MEDBAY, VHERDUN
HYPERSPACE

Julius sat out there on a conveniently layed bench next to the entrance to the frigate's medbay. He tapped nervously with his feet and to all of his crewmembers he did not look anything like his usual self. Worry plagued their gossip to the point even Wes who never really left his pilot seat had come down to the lower deck bringing the seventh caf the LT Commander would down.

Rix had tried asking him questions, so did Lena and so did Wes among others of his closer crew members. The answers he gave them were all the same - vague, laconic and dismissive. He'd smashed his caf thermos earlier when the doctor had told him he had to leave his standing overseeing position right next to the pink girl.

The door slid open and the bench ejected Julius off like a hand stung by a wasp. "Not as serious as I thought at first, Lieutenant Commander. Minor concussion, nothing more. We still did additional cerebral examinations just in case."

"Very well, Doctor."

"You may go see her. She's awake."

Julius nodded and shuffled through the doors which slid behind him. He cautiously stepped like a prowling cat to her until he leered at her from above.

"Doc said nothing serious." He stated lost for any other words and striving to keep his empathy locked as best as he could. It made him sound weird.

In the end, he was Lieutenant Commander Julius Rhein of the Humbarine Naval Intelligence.

Right?

[member="Yula Perl"]​

 

[Yula Perl]

As usual, it was all a blur.

At times like these, Yula found it useful to calm down, go through her most recent memories, and rectify the gaps. She was patrolling the kolto facility, then was met with…oh. What remained of her memories came rushing back, right up until the firefight. Yula didn’t know when she’d passed out, but it had happened during the scuffle. Yula tried to turn her head to the side, tried to see where she was, but it made her too dizzy.

The door opened, and there he was.

“Just a bump on the head, is all. I’ve come back from much worse.” She almost slurred her words there, and whatever drugs they gave her for the pain were still in her system.

“So tell me,” She moved, trying to sit up. “Were we at least on the same side this time?” She was trying to deduce if she were a prisoner here. Moving hurt and she gasped in pain, crumpling back down onto the bed.

[member="Julius Rhein"]

 

[Zef Halo]

He observed her like a mynock drowns at the sight of his precious power cables. Her being so close to him propelled him down memory lane to a time long gone now. The two lying in a hospital bed on a Humbarine ship en route to his homeworld after a raid on a First Order military facility had gone wrong. It was completely accidental, really. Humbarine Spec Forces had deployed and infiltrated the facility with the aim of 'privatizing' a valuable piece of data. Meanwhile, Yula had been on an espionage mission there for the ORC. All guns blazing the Humbarine task force led by Julius had blown her cover which resulted in a catastrophic escape with both of them severely wounded. It was somewhere in the early stages of their relationship.

Unlike now, they had quarreled like wild dogs over the last piece of bone. She blamed him for his reckless modus operandi and he had blamed her for not telling him she'd been there. The fight lasted all the way till the two were separated to different rooms in the Humbarine Military Hospital.

Julius looked back at the memory with a sip of nostalgia.

"Yeah." He replied curtly returning back to reality. "This time." He added that after a pause with a mix of irritation and sadness.

With how the galaxy worked nowadays Julius' expected that next time they might be on opposite sides.

The thought struck him hard in the gut.

He looked away for a moment trying to seize the scripted questions about the bird goon who seemed to know her.

Alas, to no avail.

Instead a knee-jerk question seized him. "So who's Vik?"

And he already regretted spilling it from his mouth.

[member="Yula Perl"]​

 

[Yula Perl]

Jul’s surly tone was not lost on Yula. Instead of being offended, of snarking back and giving him a fight, she couldn’t help but feel a little giddy. What they had was chaotic, but the two had cared for each other deeply. If not for their conflicting ideals and constant headbutting, maybe they would have worked.

“Aw,” She teased, managing a pained smile. “You say that like it’s a bad thing, Juls.” His tone was steeped in the bitterness she remembered. Strangely enough, it was comforting to know that the years they’d spent apart hadn’t chanced either of them too much.

Even though Yula had expected his question to come up, she couldn’t prepare for the pang of awkwardness in her stomach. Deciding to stop fighting the unease of remaining upright, she reluctantly settled back down onto the bed. A pause before she answered him with a little grin and a twinge of delight to her words. “You always were a straight shooter, Juls. I knew you’d go far.” Yula turned her head, something appreciative and genuine in her gaze. The scoundrel wouldn’t say it, but she was proud of him for throwing his all into something he believed in. Even if he was technically wrong.

“Vik and I met on Zeltros. Maybe a year or so after…” She trailed, letting him fill in the gaps. Normally quick with a snarky comment, Yula found herself surprisingly devoid of words or flowery language to buffer the explanation. “We’re together.”

[member="Julius Rhein"]

 

[Zef Halo]

Sitting upright on the chair with hands clasped on his knees, the soldier gazed at Yula as she spoke. The rather uncomfortable tense position in which he sat - a habit stamped on his mind by the boot sergeant years ago was unbreakable. Some habits you just take to the grave with you. Looking into her eyes he knew that to be too true.

She eased up back into the bed and said. “You always were a straight shooter, Juls. I knew you’d go far.” Julius gave her a reluctant chuckle at the comment briefly looking at the floor before turning his sight back at her. He wondered what far meant. Lieutenant Commander? The right-hand of Lord Admiral [member="Arage Bao"]? That's pretty far. Professionally.

Personally? He scratched that thought brutally. His profession was his life. Maybe once it had not been, maybe it had just been a coincidence of various different events that had led up to this. Maybe he had just ridden this wave for so long that he became one with it. It defined him in every single aspect now.

Too late for anything else.

"Vik and I met on Zeltros. Maybe a year or so after…”

“We’re together.”

The last came like a bullet straight into his heart. A bullet you god damn knew well was loaded and you god damn knew well it'd be fired but you'd still keep on stubbornly deny yourself that knowledge up to the moment you bleed out. Julius remained silent, not even a flinch. Some would even mistaken him for a statue at this point. How much more could he bleed out? He prayed and begged and believed he had bled it all out but that wasn't the case.

Kark.

For the first time in his life Julius Rhein did not know what to say. He stood there like a kid being rightfully schooled by his parents. A kid who knew he damn well had gone and screwed up.

"Right." The word barely made it out of his lips before he cleared his throat. Light flickered in his eyes as if a corpse had just been resurrected. Life had been forced into it. "Good. That's good."

Eyes fell back on the ground as if trying to find an answer to it all written down on the floor. To no avail. No script could be found there. Nothing.

"Good together? He good to you?" The questions slid down not from his mind but from his heart. Julius swore if the kriffer was some sort of no-good outer rim trash scoundrel, he'd be stepping on his carcass sooner rather than later.

[member="Yula Perl"]​

 

[Yula Perl]

Most of the time, Yula cherished her Zeltron heritage. There were quiet a few in the galaxy who looked down on her people, but to her, they just didn’t bother to look close enough. Beneath the frivolities and festivity were an emotionally developed people, kind and courageous and loving. They endured their trails and celebrated their happiness the same as anyone else in the galaxy. Above all else, their depth as a people was often overlooked.
Julius hadn’t overlooked it.

Maybe at first, given his militaristic state of mind. And Yula wasn’t atypical for a Zeltron. He was wary of Forcers and non-Humbariners, and she disliked imperialistic types. They went against everything each other stood for, so it must have been fate that they’d ended up together, right?
In the end, they had just been too different. And Yula was silently regretting parts of her Zeltron blood now as Jul’s heartbreak seeped over her. There was no indication of it on his face, nor his posture, but that’s where sharp empathy skills got you.

“Y-“ She swallowed, finding her throat suddenly dry. “Y-yeah. Yeah, he’s good to me. You don’t gotta worry Juls, he has my back.” She spoke in an uncharacteristically soft voice as if pleading with him not to feel bad. “Not from the Rim either.”

She shifted, trying to find a comfortable position before laboring over onto her side so that she could face him. “How’ve you been doing all this time, Juls?”

[member="Julius Rhein"]

 

[Zef Halo]

Julius gazed at nowhere in particular listening to Yula. He could catch the note of worry and perhaps a bit of sadness in her voice. So she still had something for the Humbariner, after all? That made it all much tougher for him to accept.

Accept and move on.

Easier said than done, for sure.

He just sat there in silence almost frozen, only the blinking of his eyes differing him from a statue. Memories of days bygone shared between the two rolled like a film through his mind. They flashed quick through his mind not giving him a chance to grasp one and cling on it forever. They were over. He had to shove that in his mind and move on.

You only forget a girl with another girl.

Or a lot of alcohol.

The words of his father hit him like a hammer and he suddenly fell the need to drown himself in the cheapest liquor this side of the galaxy offered. Julius looked back deep in her eyes nodding approvingly. If she was good, then Julius was good too, right?

"Same ol', same ol'. With the Admiralty reclaiming Humbarine, I've been trusted with the most essential tasks that need to be completed. All coming down personally with the Lord Admiral herself - [member="Arage Bao"]. " He welcomed the change of topic leaning back on his chair. The weight of the galaxy disappeared from his shoulders for now. "At war with the Corellians has me detailed to all sorts of places far from home like the Outer Rim." Thinking over his reply, Julius realized he had nothing really personal to share. Apart from the usual necessary one night hook ups during the short periods of free time he had, the intelligence officer had nothing else going on. His professional life was his personal life. Simple as that. It sounded sad and it probably was to the majority of the galaxy but not to him.

Duty came above all.

He crossed his arms and his face turned slightly grim.

"You wouldn't know anything about a connection between the Corellians and the Coalition, would you?" Julius asked inquisitively. "You were Corellian from one side weren't you?"

Heck yeah she was. And, oh, how he disliked the Corellians.

Guess it really wasn't meant to be no matter how much Julius had a hard time of accepting it and trying to keep the fire burning for the future.

The future in which he saw the two of them together.

A man is no one without a dream, right?

[member="Yula Perl"]​

 

[Yula Perl]

Same ol’ same ol’ indeed. A bantha couldn’t change its stripes…or something. A quick tip she’d picked up in the smuggling business.

First he seemed to relax, then he stiffened again. Not out of nerves, because the topic segued into more familiar territory for him. Yula grinned wide, annoyingly so.

“Still am Corellian, Juls. From my mom’s side.” She’d was a little part everything he disliked. Foreign, rebel, Forcer, Corellian. It had been, and still was an entertaining dynamic. "Also geeze, not all Corellians know each other."

Casting her head back onto what passed for a pillow, she audibly hummed in thought. “You always did love a good interrogation.” Yes, there was a playful curl at the edge of her voice. Teasing had always been in her nature, especially when the dance partner was so serious and by the book.

“If I know anything, what makes you think I’d tell you?” Snarky for sure, but with the harsh, clinical lighting above them dancing in her eyes, Yula had made this a game.

[member="Julius Rhein"]

 

[Zef Halo]

He'd play.

Julius leaned on the knuckle of his own hand as Yula kept on being Yula with a very slight smirk touching his face. He slowly found himself drifting away from the soldier's typical tension to a rather more personal demeanor. Over the course of their conversation the lieutenant commander had gone back and forth from an officer of the Humbarine Naval Intelligence to the Zeltron's ex. It was no sharp shift but rather fluid like the mesmerizing swinging of a Newt'on's cradle.

“If I know anything, what makes you think I’d tell you?”

He almost chuckled at her and carefully leaned over to her face at an extremely intimate distance. All he could see was the pink hues of the skin he missed caressing and the intricate and playful green eyes he missed waking up to. Their whole relationship, even now, could easily be described as a paradox. What connected them so much also disconnected them equally.

"Because..." Julius left it hanging for a moment. A modest grin on his face formed almost touching her lips. A grin that aimed to tear her beloved ego with the words:

"...I just saved you."

[member="Yula Perl"]​

 

[Yula Perl]

She hated it when he played the game.

Anyone else? Sure, she’d play right back. Play harder. Play better. Even though they’d spent years apart, Julius knew her intimately. Fundamentally. And she hated that.

Suddenly he was close, personal space be damned. The curl of his voice, the taunt made her stomach twist and her chest burn. The soldier knew how to push her buttons, that was for sure. So austere and driven, she often forgot just what he was capable of.

Yula reached up to curl one of her hands into his shirt. This was where she would have jerked him forward, his lips would crash onto her own and they would spend the next forty-five minutes on this uncomfortable cot.

Instead she pushed him away with a grunt of exertion.

“Don’t remind me, imperial dog.” Grunting, the Zeltron heaved herself up into a sitting position. Yula had grown into a less stubborn woman since they’d last met, but he still brought it out in her. The only way she knew how to react to Juls was with indignation. Swinging he legs over the table, she paused to take in a breath and steady herself. Though her injuries were minor, they still hurt.

“I’m out of here.” Bracing herself with both hands on the bed, she slipped off and took a few wobbly steps towards the door. Her ankle screamed in pain and she promptly crumpled to the ground, swears aplenty.

[member="Julius Rhein"]

 

[Zef Halo]

Oh, how foolish he had always been with Yula.

Julius had triggered her, he had aimed to do so, he knew perfectly he had succeeded to do so but when she pulled him in so close in an embrace for a kiss - all connection between mind and heart was lost. Cut down by a blade of corellian steel and replaced with the sensation of floating carelessly on a cloud of pink glitter.

And she pushed him away from that cloud. The shock on his face evident and bearing semblance to the shock one experienced when he was freefalling from the tallest skyscraper on Coruscant.

...imperial dog. He emotionally crashed down to the brutal cold floor of reality.

She waddled towards the exit of the medbay with Julius trying to catch up to her after mildly shaking away the emotional vertigo he had just experienced. Yula crumbled down on the ground quite pathetically and rather hard to the point a stupid, darn and cursed shelf beside her collapsed and unleashed its contents.

Just as he crouched beside her to try and pick her up, a piece of that content gracefully landed right between them.

Heaven​

by Emily​

​

"You need to rest." Julius said reading from a script but wasn't sure if he even heard himself.

[member="Yula Perl"]

 

[Yula Perl]

It was practically torture to admit to herself that she still held something for Julius. If she didn’t, his taunting wouldn’t have had such an effect on her. Her cruelty was a knee-jerk reaction, a defense mechanism against the violent vortex of emotions this meeting was forcing her to feel. It was an underhanded way for her to gain her power back, or at least have a measure of control.

It didn’t work, and she continued to feel worse for it.

She trundled away, stumbled and reached out to whatever she could find for support. The shelf came down with her, the string of curse words being cut off as a photograph fluttered to the floor. It landed between her and Julius, who was in place to retrieve her from the ground.

An uncomfortable silence fell between them as they stared at the image. Though it had begun to show signs of fading, Yula remembered everything vividly about that day. The heat, the exhaustion. The sweat collecting on her brow, the weariness of her body as she leaned her back against his. The warmth of his hand on her own, a tender feeling that had seemed so out of place for their setting, but had felt so right. The snarky comment and the laugh she gave before handing the bottle over to him.

She turned her head abruptly, away from the past. Yula urged herself not to get too sentimental.

“I need to leave.” She mumbled. “I can’t be here.” Not with him, not when everything that she had convinced herself was dead, was very much alive.

[member="Julius Rhein"]

 

[Zef Halo]

Julius was lost in the past.

They were not aboard the Vherdun, they were together in the heat of that wreck of a place, his back against hers, his hand in hers, the taste of her lips lingering on his own and on the head of the bottle. He didn't want to leave it, he couldn't leave it. Was that regret eating him from within? Hell, yes. The unbreakable, unmovable dedication to duty had cost him the most valuable moments of his life to cease. They had pushed her away.

Pity.

“I need to leave. I can’t be here.”

The words came like a dagger in his heart piercing and killing the memory. He reached for it with all his soul but couldn't hold it. Stuck between reality and memory lane, Julius nearly left a tear stroll down his cheek. Nearly.

He took a deep breath not giving her even a glance but just staring into nothing in particular.

"I understand." Julius forced himself to say still looking at the walls. Then he staggered up. "We'll be shortly out of hyperspace and a shuttle will send you down to the planet's spaceport." He sounded as if his voice was coming from elsewhere.

"I will leave you to rest." eyes could not look at her.

In that life-turning moment Julius realized that nothing in this galaxy was worse than the feeling of regret.

"Godspeed, Yula Perl."

And he would forever be plagued by it.

[member="Yula Perl"]​