Private In Shiraya's Sight

[Malcoma Hesse]

Following Finding Malcoma​

Suddenly, she was aware again.

Of the soft light filtering past her eyelids.

Of the sweet smell of flowers she couldn't identify.

Of idle chatter just far enough away to blend into meaningless sounds.

A smile broke across Malcoma's face, happy though heavy with painkillers. That must have been a few of her girls. Whose voices, though? Maybe Vahleet and...Lomya? No, Tenot. Or...no, it didn't matter.

All that mattered was that they were safe on Denon—all of them, together. That they had gotten off of Coruscant in time—

The blonde's smile shattered into panic, pieces scattering across the room as she flung herself up. Now she could sense the things that delirium had somehow obscured completely: the undertones of sterility and beeping of a vitals monitor. She relaxed as quickly as she had tensed, the muscle in her forearm easing around the IV needle stuck in it. A cursory glance of the room suggested that it wasn't of Sith design and too sophisticated to be associated with ruffians like the slavers who had kidnapped her. Still, she didn't discard caution altogether. She hadn't survived all she had by stumbling through it unaware, hoping for the best outcomes.

Her attention whipped to the door as footsteps approached. Adrenaline had sharped her senses and while she couldn't identify the topic of conversation now, she could tell that the involved speakers were definitely not her girls. They were almost certainly nurses given the hospital setting.

Though the door remained closed for a few moments more, the impression of a figure coming through it came to her. She blinked. A raven-haired woman in tan Jedi tunics smeared with some blood. A bird—and, what was the name?—a convor on her shoulder.

The woman's name eluded her. Some memory in Mal's mind obscured it like a single cloud on an otherwise clear day.

Seo Linn​

 

[Seo Linn]

The soft hiss of the door preceded Seo's entrance by only a moment.

She stepped quietly into the room, pale blond hair pulled loosely back from her face, tan Jedi tunics threaded faintly with gold catching the warm light of the Naboo medical facility. There was nothing dramatic about her appearance, no armor or visible wounds, only the calm attentiveness in her gold eyes and the lightsaber resting openly at her hip.

Seo slowed slightly when she realized Malcoma was awake. Relief crossed her expression first, subtle but unmistakable. "You are conscious," she said softly.

Her voice carried the steady calm of someone trying not to overwhelm a person who had already endured enough. She remained near the doorway at first rather than immediately approaching the bedside, allowing Malcoma a moment to orient herself.

"My name is Seo Linn," she continued gently. "You are safe. You are in a medical facility on Naboo." Her gaze flicked briefly toward the monitors before returning to Malcoma herself.

"Efret brought you out of the transport that was taking you toward Quesh," Seo explained carefully. "She intercepted the vessel before it reached its destination and got you here alive. The doctors said you lost a significant amount of blood before arriving."

Seo's expression softened slightly. "They also said your arm was severely injured," she added quietly. "There was extensive damage, but the surgeons were able to stabilize you."

Only then did she step a little closer, enough to be present without crowding her.

"The nurses said you had been unconscious for quite some time," Seo continued. "They were not certain when you would wake." A faint pause followed before a small, reassuring smile touched her lips. "But you did."

Malcoma Hesse

 

[Malcoma Hesse]

The woman who can through the doors now wasn't the one from her disembodied memory of arriving in this place. They both carried a lightsaber at their belts and wore tunic of similar hue, but their skin tones and hair colors were opposed.

Then Seo spoke to introduce herself and explain the series of events that had brought Mal here, or at least some of them. What Seo didn't know to tell her would come back to her in hazy waves over the next hours to days. But for now, Mal was content knowing what was offered.

She nodded. Efret. That was her name.

A woman who used the Force, but had not introduce herself as a Jedi, at least not to Mal herself. But the mobster didn't need to be told; she wasn't dense, even with a good portion of her blood volume scattered across a freighter's cold deck. Plus, she had spent enough time around Judah Lesan to be able to rather accurately pick out his siblings in Ashla.

Silence swelled up to fill the silence after Seo spoke. Opening her mouth to fill it, Mal found unexpected resistance, not physically but mentally. She pushed two syllables from her mouth with great effort. When her voice came, it was not slurred or pained—just slow with ebbing anesthetics and sleep. "Yes, uh..." she began.

She might have reached for her dry, cutting wit and commented about avoiding Jedi all her life, just to meet two in close succession with surely more to come, but she didn't. "Thank you." Whether she was genuinely moved to verbally expressing gratitude—more than a rarity for her—or she realized that she didn't have enough energy to say that many words, no one would know. Not even her herself.

Though her aura was too foggy to sense her current intentions, her body language also betrayed her deep exhaustion.

"Thank her," she added, referring to Efret's efforts.

Her blue gaze drifted down to look at her hand, resting atop her blanket. "I had a cybernetic finger," she recalled as she wriggled her fingers. All four plus her thumb. One had been robotic not long ago. Now they were all flesh: synthflesh.

"I need to call my family." She glanced around the room, looking for where her belongings had been placed, until she realized that she didn't have any. The slavers had sold off what she had on her when they had kidnapped her. She looked back at Seo. "May I borrow a commlink?"

Seo Linn​

 

[Seo Linn]

Seo remained quietly still while Malcoma spoke, allowing the pauses to exist without trying to rush her through them. Exhaustion hung heavily around the woman in the bed, visible in the slowness of movement and the effort it took simply to push thoughts into words, and when the thank you finally came, Seo inclined her head slightly in acknowledgment.

"I will," she said softly when Mal asked her to thank Efret. "She stayed until the doctors were certain you would survive."

At the request for a commlink, Seo nodded without hesitation and reached into one of the pouches at her belt. As she withdrew the slim device and stepped closer to place it within Malcoma's reach rather than directly into her hand, the sleeve of her tunic shifted just enough to expose the faded slave marking branded into the inside of her forearm.

Old. Healed. But unmistakable. Seo did not seem to notice it.

"Of course," she said gently. "Take your time."

Her gold eyes flicked briefly toward the door before returning to Malcoma.

"Your family will likely be relieved to hear your voice," she added quietly, and there was something in the way she said it that suggested experience rather than assumption, as though she understood intimately what it meant to vanish and return from somewhere terrible.

After a brief pause, Seo spoke again.

"I can leave the room if you would prefer privacy," she offered. "Or stay, if you would rather not be alone yet."

Malcoma Hesse

 

[Malcoma Hesse]

For once in the last decade or so, Mal didn't say family as a euphemism for the Coruscanti mob of the same name.

She meant her girls and Damris on Denon.

Judah too, wherever he—

What Efret had told her about his own capture came back to her.

Mal reached over for the commlink with her remaining hand, not ready to try introducing more movement to her new cybernetic just yet. "It'll go both ways," she agreed with a small smile. She had noticed Seo's faded slaver's mark and had recognized it immediately for what it was.

She had not one but two of her own, plus a tattoo that indicated transfer to another slaver, but they were all hidden underneath her hospital gown. Though both of her brands were different designs, which were separate from the one on Seo, they had a more or less standardized layouts. Plus, brands were brands. They more often than not symbolized one of the galaxy's worst depravities.

And that unspoken bond shared between two former slaves endeared Malcoma to Seo immediately.

"I'd appreciate privacy. I'll press the call button when I'm done."

An hour later, Mal did just that.

"Here," she said as she held Seo's comm out for her. "You know, I've been here before." She shook her head. Not in Theed, not in the presence of Jedi in a hospital. "Generally." A wry smile. "Though being rescued is new.

"I pulled myself out of slavery three times." A curt laugh at the misfortune that had led her here forced its way out of her slightly flaring nostrils. "I though I had ended this cycle for myself."

For herself, and for some others.

Not enough—never enough—but some others.

She wasn't the ruthless slaver that the underworlds thought she was. She bought them, yes, stole more, but never sold. What she dealt in instead was freedom. That was both priceless and not for sale.

Seo Linn​

 

[Seo Linn]

Seo had honored the request for privacy without hesitation, stepping quietly from the room and remaining nearby without hovering, giving Malcoma the space to reconnect with the people who mattered to her. When the call button finally summoned her back an hour later, she returned with the same calm presence as before, slipping inside as the door hissed shut behind her.

She accepted the commlink gently when Mal held it out, her fingers brushing briefly against the other woman's hand before tucking the device back into the pouch at her belt. Then she listened, truly listened as Malcoma spoke of slavery not as an abstract horror or distant memory, but as something lived repeatedly, escaped repeatedly, survived repeatedly. Seo's expression shifted almost imperceptibly with each sentence, not with pity or shock, but with the kind of understanding that came only from someone who had walked through the same fire.

When Malcoma's curt laugh broke the air, Seo let the silence settle for a moment before speaking. "You did end it," she said quietly, her voice carrying no empty reassurance, only conviction. "The fact that someone dragged you back into it does not erase every time you fought your way out. Survival is not failure. Being overpowered is not surrender."

She drew back the sleeve of her tunic again, exposing the faded slave mark on her forearm fully this time. "I did not free myself alone," she admitted softly. "I killed my master, but by the time it was over, I was barely aware of what I had done. James Justice found me afterward and got my mother and me out. Without him, I do not know what would have happened to us."

There was no shame in the admission, only honesty.

"I understand the fear," she continued, her fingers brushing the edge of the old brand before letting the sleeve fall. "The sense that no matter how far you go, some part of the galaxy will always try to drag you back into chains. It leaves marks deeper than skin."

Seo's gaze settled on Malcoma then, steady and unflinching, but warm in a way she rarely allowed herself to be. "You are not someone broken by what was done to you," she said softly. "You are someone who has been forced to survive alone for far too long."

Malcoma Hesse

 

[Malcoma Hesse]

Mal's blue eyes shifted from Seo's faded tattoo up to her face. Something with her gaze is soft, understanding in a truly empathetic way guided by the unfaded memory of lived experience rather than the Force. "I'm glad you and your mother got out," she said sincerely. She motioned with her organic hand to the architecture of the room, not wanting to move her cybernetic yet. "To end up in a place like this..." she mused, referring to the larger environment of Jedi rather than the hospital itself. "...wasn't for a younger me, but we take safety where we find it."

A rare, genuine smile touched her lips where she normally shows her sardonic coldness to the world. "In fact, I think I should do something a bit out-of-character and stay here awhile," the former mobster stated. "Someone in my life would probably try to convince me to, were he here. Another, uh, Jedi, actually. Do you know Master Judah Lesan ?"

When she had called the Guesthouse, Damris had told her that Efret had told him that Judah had been captured some time ago, likely by the Sith. He hadn't had many more details to share since Efret hadn't shared many to begin with, but he did tell her that even in captivity a vison of Judah had asked his fellow to find her rather than him.

Mal shifted against the headboard of her bed, uncomfortable with her imagining of what could be happening to him, not the arrangement of pillows at her back.

"Efret told my family that he was captured."

Seo Linn​