Private Clocked Out

[Varro]

A LIFE OF HIS OWN

Varro stepped through the doorway and waited until it had closed behind him before releasing the breath he'd apparently decided to hold sometime during the last few minutes of the meeting. It hadn't been a bad meeting. That was the strange part. There had been no accusation waiting for him. No list of failures. No carefully worded warning that he had disappointed someone. Ra'a'mah had wanted to discuss work, so they had discussed work. Cargo runs. Manifests. Schedules. The sort of things that had somehow become ordinary pieces of Varro's life over the last little while.

He was getting better at them, too. That still felt good. Varro adjusted the strap of the small satchel hanging from his shoulder and started down the corridor. One lekku shifted absently behind him as he replayed portions of the conversation in his head. There were things he could improve. There were always things he could improve. But there hadn't been anything disastrous. And now...

He was off. Varro's steps slowed. Not finished for the evening with another shift waiting for him in the morning. Not waiting around in case somebody decided they needed him. Not given a few hours in which he was expected to remain available. Actually off.

The young Twi'lek glanced down the corridor as though someone might suddenly emerge and correct the misunderstanding. Nobody did. "Right." He continued walking. That was good. Probably.

The problem was that Varro had become considerably better at figuring out what to do when someone handed him a cargo manifest than when someone handed him absolutely nothing. He could train. Shade had given him enough things to practice that he could probably occupy several hours falling onto a mat without embarrassing himself too badly. There was always something useful to read. He could review the next route. Check his equipment. Go over the transport's inventory again. All perfectly reasonable things to do. All of which sounded suspiciously like work. Varro frowned. Apparently freedom came with scheduling difficulties nobody had bothered to warn him about.

The property was certainly a pleasant enough place to be stranded with too much free time. Naboo was almost offensively beautiful compared with some of the places Varro had known. Even inside, hints of that elegance were everywhere: broad windows admitting warm sunlight, polished stone beneath his boots, architecture designed by people who apparently believed buildings should be attractive instead of merely functional.

He passed one of the windows and stopped. There were people outside going about their day. Some hurried with obvious destinations. Others very clearly did not. A couple walked together talking. Someone sat beneath the shade with a drink. A small group farther away seemed to be laughing about something that couldn't possibly have been important.

Varro watched them for a few seconds. Maybe that was what he was supposed to do. Something unimportant. His mouth twitched upward. "I am going to be terrible at this."

Varro turned from the window and resumed his walk, still considering the deeply complicated question of how a free young man was supposed to waste an afternoon. He rounded the next corner. And nearly walked straight into someone. Varro stopped abruptly, taking a quick half-step backward as his hands lifted instinctively.

"Sorry. I wasn't—" Recognition interrupted him. He hadn't actually met her before, but Ra'a'mah wasn't exactly secretive about the existence of her family. Varro had seen enough to make the connection, and there was more than enough resemblance for the last pieces to fall into place.

His posture straightened almost automatically. "Oh." For just an instant, all his thoughts about free afternoons disappeared beneath the considerably more familiar concern of making a good impression. "You're Sera." A beat passed before Varro added, with considerably more certainty, "Ra's daughter."

VARRO
• Location: A private residence/property owned by Ra'a'mah Numare, Naboo
• Objective: Figure out what to do with an unexpected stretch of free time.
• Outfit: Casual Clothes
• Company: Sera Dragovalor

 

[Sera Dragovalor]

Sera had been enjoying being home. There was something almost strange about how quickly the habits she'd developed elsewhere seemed to loosen once she was back on Naboo. No uniform, no commander waiting to see whether she'd understood the latest lesson, no need to wonder whether she was standing correctly or asking the right question. She'd traded all of that for comfortable clothes, her copper-red hair left loose instead of pulled back for training, and an afternoon in which she had nowhere in particular she needed to be. For once, Sera was perfectly content with that, even if some small part of her still occasionally insisted that surely there was something productive she ought to be doing.

Which probably explained why she wasn't paying much more attention to the corridor than Varro had been. She stopped short when he nearly walked into her, surprise flashing across her features as she took a quick step backward. Whatever irritation might have accompanied being nearly flattened never had the chance to appear. Instead, Sera blinked at the green-skinned Twi'lek with his hands raised between them, then gave a soft laugh once it became obvious neither of them had actually collided. "You're fine. I wasn't exactly watching where I was going either."

Her eyebrows rose when he said her name, and then climbed a little higher when he followed it immediately with Ra's daughter. Apparently, introductions were going to happen slightly out of order today. "That would be me," she confirmed, amusement warming her expression as she regarded him with considerably more curiosity than concern. "Although 'Ra's daughter' makes me sound suspiciously like I'm about to get you in trouble."

She wasn't particularly surprised that someone around the property knew who she was. Her mother had spent Sera's entire life knowing people, employing people, helping people, making arrangements with people, and occasionally leaving Sera wondering exactly when she'd found the time for half of it. Ra had taught her plenty over the years, though rarely by sitting her down and explaining every detail of her business or everyone involved in it. Sera had learned instead to watch, listen, ask when something concerned her, and accept that there were things people had every right to keep for themselves. Whoever the young Twi'lek was, however, he knew her mother, Sera, wasn't going to pretend she knew more about him than she actually did.

She offered him her hand, the easy smile remaining as she completed the introduction he had inadvertently started. "Sera Dragovalor, officially this time." Her gaze settled on him expectantly, and there was a hint of teasing in her voice when she continued. "And since you already have an unfair advantage, I think I at least get your name."

There was something pleasant about the whole encounter, really. At Aurora Station, she was Private Dragovalor and, increasingly, Laphisto's apprentice, with all the expectations that came attached to both. Here she could simply be Sera, standing in a familiar corridor after almost colliding with a stranger who somehow already knew exactly who she was. She found she rather liked the difference.

Varro

 

[Varro]

A LIFE OF HIS OWN

Varro stared at her for half a second longer than was strictly necessary. Trouble? There had been a time when a woman making a comment like that would have been easy. Smile. Let his eyes linger just long enough. Say something flattering with exactly the right amount of implication behind it. Varro had learned those little exchanges long before he'd learned how to properly read a cargo manifest.

Except those women had generally been older than him. And, more importantly, he'd been expected to charm them. Sera was standing there in comfortable clothes, smiling at him like someone his own age who had simply decided to tease him. That was apparently different.

"I hadn't considered that," Varro finally replied, a smile beginning to tug at one corner of his mouth. "Should I be worried?" His delivery wasn't bad. Actually, he thought it had been rather good. Then he added, "Professionally, I mean." There it was. Varro resisted the urge to close his eyes. Brilliant.

Fortunately, Sera rescued him from having to figure out how to recover by extending her hand. His gaze dropped toward it briefly before he accepted it. "Varro." There was a fractional pause. "Just Varro." His handshake was perhaps a little more formal than the situation required, but the smile accompanying it wasn't. Sera Dragovalor, officially. He could work with that.

"And I don't know that I'd call it an unfair advantage." Varro released her hand. "More like being properly prepared for a dangerous encounter." Better. He gave her a slightly crooked smile, pleased enough with that one that some of the uncertainty disappeared from his expression.

"Though I suppose identifying you as your mother's daughter immediately after nearly walking into you wasn't my most impressive introduction." There was something unexpectedly comfortable about admitting that. Varro had spent enough of his life worrying about saying the correct thing that discovering he could simply acknowledge when he'd been awkward was strangely liberating.

He shifted the strap of the satchel higher on his shoulder. "I work for your mother. Her transport company." A little pride slipped naturally into the explanation. He was still getting accustomed to having an occupation he could describe that way. "Cargo handling, administration, manifests. That sort of thing."

Varro considered that description. "And occasionally staring at paperwork until it becomes intimidated enough to make sense." The joke came more easily this time. Perhaps he wasn't terrible at this. Then again, Varro wasn't entirely certain what this was. They were just talking. There wasn't anything he was supposed to accomplish. Sera wasn't someone he needed to impress on somebody else's behalf. She wasn't a client or a passenger. He wasn't being paid to keep her entertained. He could simply enjoy the conversation if he wanted to. That realization was strangely distracting.

"I actually just finished meeting with Ra." Varro gestured vaguely back toward the corridor he'd come from before looking at Sera again. "Which is why I was wandering around apparently trying to run over members of her family." His smile widened slightly before he glanced toward one of the broad windows. The afternoon beyond it remained stubbornly pleasant. People were still moving through the grounds, including several who seemed to have mastered the mysterious art of doing absolutely nothing useful.

"She told me I'm off." Varro said it like there ought to have been more to the sentence. There wasn't. He looked back at Sera. "Not finished for today and expected back first thing tomorrow. Actually off." A quiet laugh escaped him as he rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm starting to think that might be why I nearly walked into you. I've spent the last few minutes trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do when nobody needs me to do anything."

His expression turned sheepish. "So far, I've established that wandering corridors isn't particularly exciting." A beat. "And might be dangerous to innocent bystanders." There. That one had almost sounded natural.

VARRO
• Location: A private residence/property owned by Ra'a'mah Numare, Naboo
• Objective: Figure out what to do with an unexpected stretch of free time.
• Outfit: Casual Clothes
• Company: Sera Dragovalor

 

[Sera Dragovalor]

Sera managed to hold her expression together when Varro asked whether he should be worried. It was the hastily added professionally that defeated her. Her lips pressed together, but the amusement was already plainly visible in her eyes by then. She could have made the moment considerably worse for him, and for a fleeting second she looked tempted. "Professionally," she repeated, allowing just enough emphasis to reveal that his attempted recovery had absolutely been noticed. "No. I think you're probably safe." A moment passed before she added, "Probably."

His introduction finally gave her a name to put to the unfamiliar face, although just Varro caught her attention. Sera didn't question it. If that was how he introduced himself, that was what she would call him. His counter about being properly prepared for a dangerous encounter earned another quiet laugh, particularly when he followed it by admitting that nearly walking into her hadn't exactly made for the most impressive beginning. "I've had worse introductions," she assured him. "And you managed not to actually run me over, so I'm willing to give you some credit."

When he explained where he worked, recognition was immediate. "Red Dragon," Sera supplied easily. That was hardly one of the obscure pieces of her mother's business life that Sera might have missed. Red Dragon had grown out of Blackwake and become something her parents had built together, with routes and people scattered far beyond Naboo. It had been part of the background of her life for as long as she could remember, even if she had never tried to memorize every captain, coordinator, or employee working under its name. Her smile turned slightly mischievous. "Although Dad might object to you giving Mom all the credit for that one."

The pride in Varro's voice when he described what he did wasn't lost on her either. Cargo handling, administration, and manifests might not have sounded particularly glamorous, but he clearly didn't need them to. He sounded as though he genuinely liked the work, which made his joke about intimidating paperwork into submission considerably funnier. "If that works, you should probably keep it quiet," she told him. "Otherwise they'll start giving you everyone else's paperwork too."

It was only when Varro explained that Ra had actually given him time off that Sera began to suspect she'd discovered the more serious problem. She listened as he clarified that he wasn't merely finished for the day, but genuinely off, as though the distinction itself remained somewhat incomprehensible. By the time he admitted he'd spent the last few minutes trying to figure out what he was supposed to do when nobody needed anything from him, Sera was staring at him with a mixture of amusement and disbelief.

"Varro, I think that's the point." Her smile broadened. "You're not supposed to be doing anything. Being off isn't another assignment you have to figure out how to do correctly." There was no judgment in the teasing. Sera could hardly claim she'd never turned something simple into a problem she needed to solve, especially lately, but there was something particularly funny about meeting someone who apparently approached an empty afternoon with the same seriousness she might have given a training exercise.

Her gaze wandered toward the broad windows and the grounds beyond them. Naboo was home, and Sera had never needed much instruction in how to enjoy it. There were paths to wander, places near the water to sit, food to find, and any number of ways to let several hours disappear without producing a single useful thing. She looked back toward Varro and tipped her head in the direction she'd originally been going. "Come on. Before you panic and decide to spend your afternoon reorganizing manifests."

She started forward, though slowly enough that the invitation remained exactly that rather than an expectation that he follow. "I was already doing absolutely nothing important, so apparently I'm much more qualified for this than you are." Her eyes danced with renewed amusement as she glanced back at him. "And since you've already established that wandering around alone is a threat to innocent bystanders, letting you continue unsupervised seems irresponsible."

Varro