Private Catch the drift (Noelle)

[Shira Varanin]

What felt like a good half hour laters, but was more like thirty seconds than thirty minutes, icy water receded from the lakeshore. It left both Shira and Noelle high and definitely not dry. Shira scrambled upright, or tried. Jumbled ice collapsed under her and dumped her back on the frozen beach. Ice was already forming in her hair.

"Ugh. Let's...call that one a draw."

Without getting up she held out Jentaral to Noelle, handle first.

 

[Noelle Varanin]

Noelle coughed up a mouthful of water, her forearms pulling her legs out of the edge with slow, dragging movements. She collapsed besides Shira, rolling onto her back with a groan as she caught her breath.

"You are such a cheat," she breathed, accepting the hilt of the sword. Both her arm and it fell limb in place, landing with a muted thump. She coughed again, glancing her cousins way.

"Cyber lungs?" She hazard, the burn on her leg stinging.

Shira Varanin

 

[Shira Varanin]

"Jedi breath control." Shira hacked water and thumped her sternum. "All natural. Surprised the Sith didn't teach you that."

She pulled herself to her feet by a broken sapling. If her hands weren't metal, her skin would have frozen to the fresh layer of ice. The cold metal was still tacky.

"Come on - my ship has caf and blankets and crap. That way."

 

[Noelle Varanin]

She bit back her groan, feeling the cost of her exertion in every movement. That was too much. That was too far. She conserved her strength, forgoing tapas for shivers as she followed Shira with dragging steps.

Question answered-- she could not outdo a cyborg.

Yet.

"I do not work with the Sith," she murmured, finding the gumption to correct a rather vague concept. What was the eldest Varanin? Was that statement even true? She trekked onto the ship behind Shira, ice weighing down her eyelashes. She pressed the door blast door closed, helping herself into the space and grabbing a throw off the back end of a common room chair. She held it out to Shira.

 

[Shira Varanin]

"I don't know your parents personally - but Ashin Varanin, Sith Empress, and Spencer Jacobs, her First Apprentice - that's a matter of historical karking record. You telling me they stopped being Sith?"

It wasn't really a challenge, either. If her extended family was less Sithy than she'd thought, that opened interesting doors.

In the ship, Shira shucked her outer clothes and wrapped up in the scratchy blanket.

"Wear whatever you find, I don't care. You hungry? Got some good bars under the caf machine."

 

[Noelle Varanin]

Noelle blinked hard at the blunt nature Shira described her parents. It wasn't inaccurate. It wasn't the lens she viewed them through, either.

"They ... stepped back," she reasoned, putting words to her side. "They don't own anywhere. They don't mess with anything." Even as the words fell from her lips, she knew it wasn't true. She knew explicitly that Ashin was and had remained involved. Spencer died at war. Quinn had fecked the emperor of the TSE. Frequently. She couldn't stop herself from saying the lies, a childish edge to the reality she griped by her nails.

She yanked open draws aand grabbed a new set of clothing, stripping down and drying off. She turned back to Shira, tucking a caged necklace away.

"Just a caf," she dismissed, hunger curbed by fatigue. "They're my parents now, taught me everything. I'm not a sith," she concluded pointedly, Kal soulstone pulsing with the bound life she held captive at her neck.

Shira Varanin

 

[Shira Varanin]

"Oh, I know you're not, and I guess that speaks for them too. You don't fight like someone who's made hate a way of life. You're just a person, same as me. Same as anyone who's not a hardcore Jedi - or a hardcore Sith, I suppose."

Caf, survival blankets, and the worn shock couches in the galley. The ship had clearly known better days. Medical debt would do that.

"So let me get this straight. A princess, but not a Sith princess."

 

[Noelle Varanin]

"Shira, I'm not-" she stopped short, the knee jerk agitation earning a pause. It wasn't like her to be reactive. She wrapped her fingers around the caged crystal at her neck, taking a mindful moment.

"Well. Maybe," she admitted. She grabbed a second blanket, unwrapping it and easing it under her weight hair. She pushed by Shira, reaching for caf pods and plopping them into the machine.

"The Echani compact... asked me to consider taking up the crown." The words slid hesitantly off her lips as she tested them for the first time.

She placed a mug before Shira. "Technically, that's Queen."

 

[Shira Varanin]

Shira's eyes went comically wide.

"Your MAJESTY-"

 

[Noelle Varanin]

"Now that's a war declaration." She laughed, lobbing the plastic packaging at Shira. The machine beeped, their cups full. Her laughter died on her lips, a more serious comment following.

"Yeah. I suppose it is ridiculous."

She slid the cup over, its warmth kissing her face as she took silent sips.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" Came the not so tactful topic change.

 

[Shira Varanin]

Shira snagged the packaging out of the air with a laugh and got to drinking. After that much time under a frozen lake, she needed all the heat she could get. The caf went down quick and scalding.

"Well," she said to her cousin, "I wanted to remember what being a Jedi was like. These days I'm all, oh, hitting bad criminals for good criminals, and when iBorg calls I jump. I owe them enough money that I'm effectively a slave in a few ways. So I needed something else. Thanks for providing the something else."

 

[Noelle Varanin]

Noelle shivered into her cup, the warmth seeping through her bones. She slowly perked the deeper in she got, casting Shira a subtle look of concern.

“My pleasure.”

She drained her cup dry, movements slow as a thought built. “You know, if you’re looking for a change of pace...” She started, feeling her out. "I have some projects I could use help on." She extended, her expression reserved.