Private Cui Prodeste

[Kainan Wolfe]

Attn: Vidalu Na'an​

His hand closed around the woman's, calloused, taloned fingers wrapping around her hand, careful so as to not rend her flesh. He had accidents like that, long ago, at the beginning. In the many years since becoming what he was, he'd grown used to the talons and no longer needed to worry about accidentally flaying someone's flesh when offering a simple handshake. The pain was still there, of course, as intense and as fresh as it had been on the very first day. The pain was always there and always would be. He had grown used to that, too. It was a small price to pay.

Then, the Force zapped him like a thunderbolt and he flinched, ever so slightly, a barely perceptible gesture. His mind was assaulted by memories, fragments of images, too fast to discern, echoes of trauma and pain. The Sith Lord blinked to clear his mind and withdrew his hand as the handmaiden yanked hers back, severing the connection. Once more, he was reminded of how much he hated the Force.

Outwardly, he showed no sign of the disturbance he had felt. He kept his best sabacc face on, calm, clear and collected, but his mind still reeled from this invasion, this unwanted intrusion of memories and feelings not his own. "Good day, miss Na'an," he said to her. "I am sorry about the cuts, accidents happen, sometimes. If you would like, I can have one of my medics take a look at your hand."

 

[Vidalu Na'an]

Na'an stepped back into half a bow, her eye never leaving his, her left hand clenched tightly in her right. She could feel the warmth of blood seeping between her fingers. "It's all right," she said quickly, and grabbed for the bottom of her tunic. A quick wrap around would keep the blood off the Emperor's floor. "They're pretty shallow, and I'm used to handling small stuff like this. I'll just use the refresher outside before I take the tram back, if that's all right."

She bowed again quickly, and made her way back to the office door. She gave the guards a quick nod, but turned back to the Emperor before passing through it back out into the hall. Tacitus was watching her leave with the same inscrutable expression had had maintained throughout their entire conversation. This time, however, for the first time, his golden eye met her silvery grey.

"Thank you again," she said. "For the proposal."

The door clicked shut between them.

One of the guards at the door had pointed her down the hall towards a private refresher. Na'an kept her pace carefully measured, her face carefully composed as she made her way there, only sparing another glance at the mural. The monstrous faces of the Jedi depicted seemed to follow her down the hall as she walked, while the blank masks of the Empire loomed over them in judgement. The mural was only barely interrupted by the opening for the refresher; Na'an passed a hand over the panel with a slow, deliberate gesture, walked inside, then closed and sealed it behind her.

Only then did Vidalu Na'an let the whimper trapped behind her lips loose.

What was that?

What was that??

What in the name of the karking gods was that???

She crossed the space between the door and the sink in two steps, all but ripping off the stiff Imperial tunic she was wearing. The undershirt came off quickly after, and Na'an stood before the mirror bare to the waist, breathing hard, twisting her shoulder in a desperate attempt to get a look at her back. What she was looking for was crazy. Impossible. And of course, it wasn't there. The only marks on her were familiar ones--the far edge of the slice on her shoulder, the blastermarks on her near hip, the starbust-shaped burn scar nestled between her shoulder blades. Old wounds, long since healed over.

But she'd felt it. She had. At the moment Tacitus had gripped her hands with hers, she'd blinked, and in the course of that blink her brain had been flooded with agony. there were stripes of it, like fire lashed once, twice, three times across her back, so sharp and searing she could still feel its echoes stinging across her skin. She touched the space where the first stripe had begun with the tips of her fingers, and winced at the tenderness of it. Even her flesh was insisting that that pain was real, even if it hadn't left any proof.

And if the pain was real...

Na'an twisted back towards the mirror and pulled back her good eyelid with one finger. Her face was white, glazed with sweat from the strain of controlling herself, but the eye itself was still sharp and clear. She bent double over the sink, gripping the edges of it for balance, and squeezed that eye shut. The breaths she sucked through her teeth smelled like industrial cleaner.

If the pain was real, what about the rest of it? The sensations that had passed through her along with the pain? The smell of heat and dust? The sound of a girl crying? The feeling that the hand in hers was not a hand, but a stone, a weapon, a killing tool?

The sound of a voice as dark as dark, telling her to kill?

It had all been so vivid. It was still so vivid that even now, half-naked in the most sterile refresher in Kalidan, she could smell the dust and feel the heat on her skin. She had to shake herself bodily to bring herself back to the present, looking back at her own hard-eyed face in the mirror.

It was impossible, it had to be. There were Force Users who had such abilities to spare--visions, psychometry, mind-reading--but Vidalu Na'an had never been so blessed. She was a failed Padawan, at best, and the only talents of hers that had ever mattered were those of combat. She shouldn't have been able to do...whatever that was. Yet here she was, trembling with the strength of a memory that didn't belong to her.

With one of the Eternal Emperor's memories. Tacitus' memory.

What had happened in there?

What was this?

Kainan Wolfe ​

 

[Adelle Bastiel]

"A partner, more like."

Leigh looked out the tram window rather than at Miss Bastiel. Her human had grasped the broad strokes of her plan, but was drawing her own conclusions about her role in them. Those conclusions were clearly causing an adverse affect on her psychologically.

She should have found a way to discuss this with her before the dragon hunt.

"I know the timing of this disclosure is not ideal, but everything about this plan is gambling on probabilities. All three of us are in danger here, even if we do nothing--that being said, I do not wish to add to that danger without your consent. Whether we pull the trigger on this handoff, I will leave up to you."

The tram was pulling to a stop just outside of the port; from the station, it would be a short walk to where the smuggler had estimated he would make his landing. Their handoff would have to be close to that position, or not at all.

"A weapon is an acceptable loss. You are not."

Partner. Adelle rolled the thought around in her head like she would have a bite of some foreign dish. Partner. She'd been their "business partner" before back on Dantooine, when they ran deliveries for Karre Noba but that had meant little more than helping them run said deliveries. This held more weight, felt like it carried more responsibility. She doubted she'd ever stop viewing herself as a weapon, a prototype that chose its own path, but Leigh at least found her invaluable.

Gods that sounded wrong on so many levels. A droid, the least valued of all sentient life, found an organic with no real ties to her creation to be invaluable. All of Kalidan would have laughed. If it weren't shocked into a stroke first.

She gave Leigh a small smile. "Right then. What do I need to know?"



LE-03 (Leigh)