Private Here Comes the Rain Again

[Katarine Ryiah]

"Like lovers do."
​

A Few Hours Latter

She hadn't slept, not truly. The Jedi Master had spent the night in meditation instead, letting the Force sharpen her senses into something keen and restless. Now, as they moved through enemy territory toward his ship, she felt every shift in the air, every pair of eyes lingering a second too long.

Security had eased since the incident, but she still spotted clusters of law enforcement wandering the district. None of them seemed to know exactly who they were hunting. The fire had seen to that, she realized with a quiet pang of guilt.

If the authorities started tracking down the club's regulars, they might eventually piece together descriptions. But Katarine had spent a month among those women, earning their trust one drink and one conversation at a time, and by now most of them were likely too strung out, or too terrified, to say anything coherent.

Her eyes slide sideways to her companion. She had half wondered if he was going to leave her here in his mess, but her life had never been something he wanted. He had half carried her off a battlefield before, though that incident had at least not been his fault. She wondered why he cared, or why he had gone out of his way at all. Most Sith she knew would have stabbed her in the back by now.

She wanted to thank him but her voice caught in her throat. He would probably think it was weird, considering he was just cleaning up his own mess.

Mikhail Shorn

 

[Mikhail Shorn]

“Good, they’re so busy locking down the scene the idiots didn’t even bother with the spaceport,” Mikhail shook his head as they walked through the spaceport toward the bay he’d parked his freighter in. “Who runs this place now anyway, clowns?”

The door to his bay hissed open and they walked through. Mikhail had the box holding the Soulsaber tucked under one arm. He almost dropped it when he saw his freighter.

In front of the spaceship stood three beings in black, insidious robes. None of them looked the slightest bit like Coruscanti security.

“Sith,” Mikhail hissed, eyes narrowing.

The leader, a heavily tattooed Umbaran cocked his head at Mikhail.

“Astute. What gave us away?”

Shorn rolled his eyes, then looked pointedly at the lightsaber hilt hanging from the speaker’s hip.

Their presences flared up in the Dark Side. Powerful. Each a full knight or stronger.

One and even two Mikhail could handle alone. But three?

“Katarine, get inside the ship.”

The box clattered to the ground, discarded. Mikhail held up the Soulsaber.

“I’ll handle them.”

The black flecked purple blade sprang to life with a snap-hiss.

Katarine Ryiah

 

[Katarine Ryiah]

"Walk with me"​

"The Sith Covenant," she said, smirking, "though clowns does have a nice ring to it."

She grinned at him as they kept moving, then stopped cold.

Three figures blocked the corridor ahead, lightsabers clipped to their belts, the dark side rolling off them in suffocating waves. Yesterday, her biggest concern had been which tank top would impress Zane the most. Now she was staring down Sith in the middle of occupied Coruscant.

"Katarine," Mikhail said sharply, "get inside the ship."

Absolutely not.

She had only just gotten him back, and the thought of losing him again hit her with sudden, brutal clarity. If nothing else, she could buy him time or create enough chaos for him to escape the planet alive.

"And let you have all the fun?" she shot back.

She slid her lightsaber from the pocket of her jacket but kept the blade unlit.

This was not a fight she could win. Katarine knew that.

The cravings still clawed at the edges of her mind, leaving her unfocused and raw, and now fear for Mikhail twisted through her chest hard enough to hurt.

Attachments. Cravings. Excellent work staying out of trouble, Katarine.

Mikhail ignited his saber with a snap-hiss, purple black light washing across the corridor as the dark side surged violently around him. The pressure of it made her sway for half a second before adrenaline forced her forward, and that adrenaline was the only advantage she had left at keeping her head clear enough to do this.

Katarine thrust both hands outward. The Force exploded from her in a violent wave, slamming into two of the Sith and hurling them backward across the durasteel floor.

Before they could recover, she blurred forward in a burst of Force speed, appearing behind them an instant later.

The Sith reacted fast. Red blades ignited with savage snarls of light. She caught one with her own white blade, and pushed him backward while the other aimed a punch at her face.

She was too fast. She danced out of the way with a smirk. “Let’s keep our hands to ourselves gentlemen.”



Mikhail Shorn

​

 

[Mikhail Shorn]

Mikhail had expected her to listen.

He had no idea why.

“Stupid,” he muttered as she charged right into their midst. The thought of her being killed twisted at him. It shouldn’t have mattered, some random Jedi. He had what he needed. He could just leave her here.

No.

Just the thought of it made his lips twist in disgust.

“Hey baldy,” he called to the Umbaran, who was distracted as Katarine took on the other two Sith, “hold this.”

The box that had held the Soulsaber splintered into a hundred shards of wood with a violent crack, then Mikhail extended a hand and those shards shot for the Umbaran at railgun speeds. With the Force, the Sith might have danced away or used another technique, but Mikhail was just warming up.

As the shards hurtled for the Umbaran, Mikhail used the Force to grasp the Sith with telekinesis and fix him in place, as if a giant docking clamp had suddenly grabbed him in a vice grip and wouldn’t let go.

In two heartbeats, it was over. The wood shards exploded against the Umbarans flesh in bursts of splinters.

…And none penetrated.

“My turn,” snarled the Umbaran, running at Mikhail.

The Thronebreaker sighed. How many times had he been here in this exact moment? Too many to count. As the Umbaran leaped for him, Mikhail stepped to the side and yanked with awesome telekinetic Force. Hard.

The Umbaran went flying faster than should have been possible and impacted the far wall with a boom like thunder.

Mikhail’s attention turned back to the two Sith fighting Katarine. Stepping forward, Mikhail rooted one to the spot with telekinesis, then lopped his arm off with the Soulsaber, followed by his head.

He left the last one to Katarine.

“We have to get out of here.”

There would be more coming. They needed to get on the ship.

Katarine Ryiah

 

[Katarine Ryiah]

"Like lovers do”
​

Her opponent was distracted for only half a second by Mikhail's attack, but half a second was all Katarine needed. Her white blade spun in a sharp arc, and an instant later his headless body collapsed to the duracrete in a plume of smoke.

She lowered her lightsaber and deactivated it with a hiss. The adrenaline was already fading. She took a step forward, stumbled slightly, and caught herself, her hands trembling despite her efforts to steady them.

"Lead the way."

Mikhail Shorn
​

 

[Mikhail Shorn]

Hitting the button to lower the ramp, Mikhail rushed up inside the freighter, deactivating the Soulsaber as he went.

The sense of nausea and bloodlust faded with the shrinking blade, but did not depart entirely. It was the curse of whoever bore the weapon, they said. Corrupting the wielder.

Mikhail thought of it more like… a cigarette.

A really bad cigarette.

Sure it might kill him eventually but hey, that was future Mikhail’s problem. You only live twice, or whatever.

Mikhail took a seat in the pilot’s chair and didn’t even bother strapping in, he started up the sublight engines and pulled them up into orbit. A host of angry communications pings started hitting the line but Mikhail ignored them all and punched it the moment they cleared orbit, hitting the hyperdrive for the closest available system.

Only then when they were safely in the whorl of hyperspace did he lean back in the chair and turn toward Katarine. The adrenaline still had not left his system and the Dark Side swirled about the cockpit, emanating most strongly from the Soulsaber hilt in his lap.

“That was too close, but looks like I held up my end of the deal. So should I drop you off here or…” he snickered as he gestured out the viewport to the blue whorl of hyperspace.

Katarine Ryiah

 

[Katarine Ryiah]

"Talk to me"

​

Katarine sank into the copilot's chair, and once they were safely clear of the planet's orbit, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes, willing the spinning in her skull to settle.

His comment made her smirk despite herself, but it also twisted something painfully in her stomach. She had no claim on this man, no right to care where he spent his time or who he spent it with, and yet the thought still hurt. Pathetic.

If he hadn't been searching for his lightsaber, she might never have seen him again. And now that they were leaving orbit, she realized with a hollow ache that maybe she never would after this.

“Maybe a planet instead of hyperspace. Preferably one not crawling with Sith.”

Hopefully he didn’t hear the sadness in that statement like she did. She pushed her long brown hair behind her ear and sighed, trying to use sarcasm to lessen her feelings the way she always did.

“I know I’m demanding. Deal with it.”

Mikhail Shorn

 

[Mikhail Shorn]

“Oh yeah?” Mikhail raised an eyebrow.

He set the Soulsaber on the dash and spun around once in the chair lazily until he revolved to face her again.

“And how exactly should I deal with you, Kat?”

Slowly, he got to his feet. There wasn’t so much space in the cockpit. And definitely not between the two seats.

Mikhail’s blood still raced from the thrill of the fight. And the truth was… he wasn’t ready to come down from the high. Not when she looked at him that way.

“Hm?”

He leaned against the headrest of her chair and looked down at her.

Katarine Ryiah

 

[Katarine Ryiah]

"Like lovers do."​

He was too close again.

Close enough that her heartbeat turned traitorous, slamming so hard against her ribs she was certain he could hear it. She didn't know what was more dangerous anymore, the dark side curling around him like smoke, or the man himself. Both called to her in different ways, and Katarine hated that she couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.

It was cruel, really, that someone like him existed at all when her heart had already been shattered once before. As if the Force had looked at the cracks inside her and decided to widen them.

She leaned in before she could stop herself, her nose brushing his. Her deep green eyes locked onto his with an intensity that bordered on reckless. Every nerve in her body felt electrified, alive in the worst possible way. Somewhere in the back of her mind, reason whispered for her to pull away, to end this before it became something she couldn't survive.

But the voice was growing fainter.

"Do you have any idea," she murmured softly, "how hard you make it to think straight?”

This close, she could breathe him in. The scent of him mixed with heat, metal, and something darker she could almost taste through the Force itself. It sent a sharp thrill through her bloodstream that felt far too much like hunger.

Surely he knew what he did to people.

Surely no one could walk through the galaxy looking like sin given form and remain unaware of it.



Mikhail Shorn

 

[Mikhail Shorn]

Oh, he knew.

A better man might have taken stock of everything she’d been through. Maybe offered to give her space.

Mikhail was not the better man.

The Dark Side crackled around him, through him. His head swam with the after effects of channeling so much raw energy from the Soulsaber.

Or maybe it was just the way she looked back at him now with those emerald ellipses.

Brazen. Defiant.

Her nose brushed his and the air between them grew thick. Mikhail’s eyes trailed from her green gaze down her face, studying the shape her skin to the slight pout of her lips. His fingers curled into the headrest of her chair.

“Do I?” His head tilted and with every syllable his face moved a heartbeat closer to hers, “then… don’t.”

And he kissed her, lips brushing against hers with the briefest sort of tentative gentleness - as if he was worried he might shatter her into a thousand pieces. But then his other hand came up as he bent down, cupping the side of her face. Desire hit like a primal force. Raw and ravenous. The gentleness evaporated beneath his hunger as the kiss became one of those breathless, heated, electric things that sear themselves into memories.

Katarine Ryiah

 

[Katarine Ryiah]

"Here comes the rain again."

​

So much for staying clean.

The second his lips touched hers, Katarine knew she was lost. Completely, catastrophically lost. Somewhere deep in the back of her mind, a stubborn little voice warned her this was temporary, that she was just another passing flavor of the week to a man like him, and that if she let herself fall any further, the landing would destroy her.

She silenced the thought instantly, like cutting power to a control panel.

Reason vanished.

There was only him.

The kiss began almost deceptively gentle, enough to make her melt before it deepened into something stronger, hungrier, powerful enough to pull the breath straight from her lungs. She rose to her feet without breaking away, drawn toward him like gravity itself had shifted.

Her fingers slipped beneath the hem of his shirt, brushing against warm skin, and a shiver ran through her at the contact. Hunger, thirst, desire, they blurred together until she couldn't separate one from the other anymore. All she knew was that she wanted more of him, and that wanting felt dangerously close to drowning.

Katarine was completely and utterly his, and that would destroy her.


Mikhail Shorn

 

[Mikhail Shorn]

The only other sound in the cockpit besides their ragged breathing and collusion of lips was the hum of the hyperdrive through the ship’s structure. The sanitary glow of the artificial lights washed down on them as her hand slipped below his shirt and he felt the heat of her palm against him. The touch was electric.

He had not been touched like this since being brought back. Before that, seven decades of torment and not a single moment of this.

Mikhail’s teeth drug at her lower lip. His hand shot up, fingers coiling against her neck. He felt the warmth of her skin, soft above the firm lines of tendons. His mouth broke from hers only to find the edge of her jaw opposite his fingers as he kissed along her cheek and jaw until he found her neck with teeth and lips and tongue. Locks of her hair brushed against his face and he inhaled sharply, the smell of her hair and skin an intoxicant that threatened to drive him insane.

All of her shyness seemed to have bled out of her, replaced with that brazen need that made him dizzy every time he sensed it in the curl of her fingers against his skin and the touch of her lips. He needed her too. Needed her like water in a desert. Like ambrosia to a starving man.

He pushed her back against the bulkhead, the metal there in the cramped cockpit cold and unyielding. Mikhail scraped his teeth along the edge of her ear, breath hot as he whispered.

“I need you.”

Katarine Ryiah

 

[Katarine Ryiah]

"Falling on my head like a memory.”
​

His words hit her like a pulse through the Force.

For a moment Katarine forgot the stars streaking past outside the cockpit, forgot the cold metal against her back, forgot the centuries that separated the woman she had once been from the one standing here now. All she could feel was him, the heat of his body pressed against hers, the rough edge of his breath against her skin, the desperation in the way he held her like she might vanish.

Her fingers curled tighter into the skin under his shirt, her nails digging in ever so slightly.

"Mikhail…" His name left her in a whisper that barely sounded like her own voice.

She tilted her head as his mouth found her neck again, eyes falling shut while a trembling breath escaped her lips. The sensation was overwhelming. Not simply desire, though there was plenty of that, but the terrifying ache of feeling alive again after so long spent numb.

Eight hundred years frozen in darkness.

Eight hundred years stolen from her because of the same mistake she was letting herself make now. Did she have another eight hundred years to pick up the pieces of her heart again?

Kat swallowed hard, her forehead resting briefly against his as she tried to steady the storm inside her chest.

Her hand slid from beneath his shirt to his jaw, fingertips brushing against the roughness there as if reassuring herself he was real. She searched his face for only a second before giving in again, pulling him back into another kiss, deeper this time, hungry in a way that startled even her.

The Force swirled chaotically around them, carrying every ounce of longing and loneliness she had buried for centuries.

"Then have me" she breathed against his mouth.

Mikhail Shorn

 

[Mikhail Shorn]

Mikhail paused for a moment at those words, staring into her eyes until he lost himself in those green depths. Then he crushed his lips against hers again. Maybe it was the amount of Dark Side energy he had just used after being reborn, or maybe it was just her, but he felt a thundering in his chest and heard a ringing in his ears.

After so many years in the Netherworld, he ached to feel anything but pain and rage. The softness of her touch was so alien to him that the difference felt searing. There was a void in his chest after he came back. Or maybe it had always been there and death just made it worse. He didn’t know. He just knew that for a moment, for this moment, he felt less hollow. Less empty. The gentle fierceness in her mouth and the taste of her, so sweet he wanted to drink her up until he overdosed.

Space was cold. So was the inside of the freighter.

He shrugged out of his jacket anyway.

“Careful,” Mikhail hissed against her mouth between kisses as his hands started at her hips and whispered up her sides, fingers skating along the fabric of her tank top separating skin from skin, “what you wish for.”

Katarine Ryiah

 

[Katarine Ryiah]

"Tearing me apart like a new emotion”

​

Sometime Later

Katarine lay curled against him in the warmth of the cockpit, tucked into his lap as though she had always belonged there. For the first time in longer than she could remember, there was no pain clawing behind her eyes, no lingering ache buried in her bones. There was only the intoxicating scent of his skin, the steady rise and fall of his breathing beneath her cheek, and the dark, irresistible current of the Force winding around them both like silk.

Her head felt light, almost dizzy with it. Her heart fluttered wildly in her chest, and happiness hummed through her so intensely she thought she might actually start purring. She wanted to stay there forever, and to freeze this moment in amber and never let reality touch it again.

But the ship had other plans.

A sharp beep echoed through the cockpit as the navicomputer announced their imminent drop from hyperspace.

Katarine let out a long, miserable groan, and this time an unmistakable pout crossed her face. Reluctantly, she pushed herself upright and climbed from his lap, her movements slow and unsteady. Euphoria still swam through her veins, leaving her stumbling slightly as she gathered her clothes and pulled them back on.

She glanced toward him from beneath dark lashes, unable to hide the grin tugging at her lips or the warmth blooming across her cheeks.

She didn't quite know what she was supposed to say now.

Shame should have been there. Guilt, perhaps. Embarrassment. The Jedi part of her knew that.

But those feelings felt impossibly distant, drowned beneath the rush still coursing through her. For the first time since before she had been frozen for eight hundred years, Katarine felt truly, terrifyingly alive.





Mikhail Shorn

 

[Mikhail Shorn]

"Here already?" Mikhail shifted.

The chairs weren't exactly the most comfortable place. Not that they'd been using them to sleep or anything.

He followed her motions as she put her clothes back on, generating an expression of disappointment.

Mikhail did not follow suit, electing instead to lean back in his chair and admire the view while he could.

"So, I just drop you off at the nearest station, or..." he snickered, a playful smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Then he remembered she probably planned to report back to whatever passed for the Jedi Order these days and their council. And he was pretty sure in any century they were a bunch of losers.

"You're really just going to head back there, aren't you. Report in after everything."

Mikhail rolled his eyes and shook his head. It seemed ridiculous to him, answering to a group of demeaning, self-righteous assholes who probably barely bothered to get off their own chairs long enough to do anything that mattered in the galaxy. Sitting on their unearned laurels.

"We made a pretty good team, you know. Maybe you could, I don't know, delay going back to report. I can help you catch a few Sith..." he shrugged, "...we can spend hours and hours in my cabin... Seems like a win-win."

Katarine Ryiah

 

[Katarine Ryiah]

"Here it comes again, here it comes again"

​

Should she return to the Jedi? Absolutely. It was the right thing to do. She should go back and serve the galaxy as a warrior of the light.

But the truth was far less simple. Katarine no longer felt as though she belonged in this galaxy. Perhaps centuries ago she would have known her place within it, but ever since the thaw she had felt out of step with everything around her, adrift, aimless, painfully alone.

Until he appeared.

"Well," she said lightly, "I figured you'd be sick of me by now."

Katarine turned to face him fully. Her eyes traced over him, lingering longer than they should have, and her heart stumbled hard against her ribs. It was ridiculous, really, how every glance, every word, only seemed to make her want more of him.

"But if you aren't...I think," she said, a small smile tugging at her lips as she brushed a strand of long brown hair behind her ear, "I could probably be persuaded to stay."

She didn't know what she was agreeing to. She didn't know if any of this could actually work. All she knew was that, for the first time in years, she had found something she truly wanted.


Him


Mikhail Shorn

 

[Mikhail Shorn]

“Huh,” Mikhail raised a single eyebrow, “that was easier than I thought. The Jedi Order these days must be awful."

He rose from the pilot's seat and drifted over to Katarine, ignoring the cold of the cabin that raised gooseflesh all across his body.

"Or maybe I really am just that good," he smirked.

Reaching out, he tilted Katarine's chin so he could stare into those green, calming depths. Well, not as calming now. His heart thudded, reminding him he was flesh and blood again. After all this time.

"Stay."

What exactly they would be doing beyond rated R activities, Mikhail had not figured out yet. And maybe that did not matter. He wanted to flex his new lease on life a little. Or maybe he should say his new leash on life. His lips twitched, remembering what Spencer Varanin told him. An off-switch.

Mikhail hated being beholden to anybody.

"Why are you with the Order anyway?" he stroked the side of Katarine's jaw with a thumb, "The bureaucracy and red tape... doesn't it just slow you down?"

Katarine Ryiah

 

[Katarine Ryiah]

"I want to talk like lovers do”
​

“Maybe I am just a terrible Jedi.” She half smiled at him, though deep down she knew that were true. What type of respectable Jedi slept with a darksider after watching him kill a room full of people?

He stood up and moved closer to her, and she found herself wishing she hadn’t gotten dressed so she could feel more of his skin against her own. She felt a rush of dizziness at his closeness, but the longer she stayed in his presence the easier it was, and the better, like she was falling deeper into an addiction rather than fighting it.

She tore her eyes away from his body and held his icy stare intently.

“Stay”​

She nodded, feeling her stomach flip at both the knowledge that he wanted her to stay and at the way his fingers traced her face.

He asked about the Jedi and she shrugged. “I’ve been there ever since they rescued me from a cult of dark Jedi. They gave me freedom in a way. Or at least that’s how it started.”

She was sure he didn’t need to know her entire sordid history. The woman couldn’t imagine that anything as insignificant as her life would be of interest to this dark god of a man.

“Why are you with the Sith?”

Mikhail Shorn

 

[Mikhail Shorn]

“With is such a strong term,” he rolled his eyes, “more like they won’t try to arrest or kill me on sight. Unlike the Jedi…”

Shorn shook his head. Most Sith were complete and abject edgy losers who would declare themselves emperor after taking over a barren asteroid if they thought they would not be laughed out of a room.

But Jedi? Sure, the Council types were annoying. All law and order this and justice that.

Nothing compared to the gray Jedi, rogue Jedi, or whatever they wanted to call themselves. They would nuke a city because it made them angry and then try to pretend like they were part of a righteous cause, with zero consistency in their ideologies and an absolutely flooring ability to ignore cognitive dissonance.

Mikhail tended to kill those types on sight just for the hell of it.

Katarine didn’t fall into that category. She hadn’t tried to preach at him once, or show him some sort of hidden Force technique that only her bloodline knew. Both good indicators.

Katarine Ryiah