Private Shattered Starlight

[Yula Perl]

//Denon
//we always on Denon…​

The coffee table was covered in metal.

Tools were scattered over the lacquered wood surface, interspersed with lengths of wire and parts that had been scrapped from other projects. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, the barefoot Zeltron was hunched over her latest project. Something smaller, more delicate than the prosthetics she’d engineered in the past. Something more sophisticated, something that required a more refined skill set than what she had.

A replacement eye for the one that had been taken by Zaavik.

Ever since moving her business to Denon, Yula’s days were filled with boosting speeders, repairing vehicles, and re-designing components for her production droids. When Dag was around, they’d meet in the evening for dinner and a holo, if their mismatched schedules could afford it. Occasionally they’d work the same job and collapse in an exhausted heap on the couch. Even as darkness spilled across the dregs of the city-planet like ink, it was easy to keep the fire burning between them. Sometimes, that darkness would creep into the life they lived together.

Dag had been away for four days. He’d be at least a week on Coruscant, this time—maybe more, he didn’t know yet, but when he did he’d let her know. Yula was used to it. Didn’t mean that she didn’t miss him—she always did—but she had enough work to keep herself busy. Beyond that, there was usually something interesting going on between the Shadowrunners to keep her occupied.

The replacement eye was proving even trickier than she’d imagined. After some trial and error, she’d managed to get the basic concept of mechanical limbs into a usable state, starting with Kyra’s arm. But the eye… you couldn’t use servos on something this small and fragile. At least not in a way Yula knew how.

“Tsk-!” Her lips pulled back against her teeth, hang jerking away as she’d grazed the wrong wire with the tip of the soldering iron. Sparks eked from the tiny device, and she cursed the instrument she was using instead of her own hand. What she needed was a smaller adapter that would enable her to perform the intricate work that went into building an ocular implant.

If Dag had been here, he’d have pulled her from the coffee table and out of the apartment. A walk for some fresh air, maybe a trip to one of their favorite takeaways. She’d done the same for him plenty of times when he’d fallen too deeply into his crime charts, forcing him to eat, sleep, or focus on something other than the mess of poster board and string she’d moved to the garage.

Her legs unfolded, prepare to rise and retrieve the kit of interchangeable tips before she stopped short. Cupped in her hands, the faux eye stared back at her. This was the furthest she’d gotten on her many attempts, and the outer casing of the eye looked nearly identical to the real thing. Although the inner working left a lot to be desired, the design was striking. A shade of green, somewhere between emerald and olive, gazed at her. In the silence of the apartment, she saw anger reflected in the green iris.

Mocking anger.

And then, disappointment in its unblinking gaze. Instead of fixing the root of the problem, she was once again trying to cover this one with a band-aid—a faux organ, a solution that wasn’t really a solution, and certainly one that she didn’t deserve.

In Zaavik, she had been too little, too late. With Kyra and Nida, she hadn’t even tried. And where she did try, failure followed. Her selfishness had already taken its toll, condemning her to a life of disappointing others like a black mark.

The eyeball shattered in a crash of glass and metallic viscera against the floor.

Her thoughts were slipping into a dark place, a place where Yula knew it wasn’t good for her to be alone. Dagon was away, but she knew something else that could soothe it. Padding over broken glass, Yula made her way to the bedroom closet. Boxes and clothes were pushed aside as she dug towards the back, then jimmied open a loose floorboard in the corner. A bag and a needle. He wouldn’t be home for at least three more days. He wouldn’t know.

She’d never tell him.

It hit her harder, quicker, better than usual. Being clean for months and losing your tolerance did that, and the shame of relapsing melted into nothingness. Yula settled back into the couch and sighed, arm going limp and releasing the needle onto the floor. It didn’t make everything right with the world, but her problems were on the periphery instead of front and center, staring her in the eye.

Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

DENON,
ALWAYS DENON

Despite the growing apocalyptic situation on Coruscant with the rift between the Alliance's politicians and the New Jedi Order, Dagon smiled. He was home earlier, even if it would be a brief return, the raven-haired Jedi couldn't stave off the warmth in his guts that he would see her. When Dagon paced before the crime boards in the garage, then returned back to crimefighting at night, sleepless for thirty-six hours straight - she would be the one to pull him away, brew him caf or knock him out to sleep.

When the galaxy all but seemed to break at the seams and collapse, she would be the one to embrace him and tell him it could always be worse.

As stubborn as both were in their divergent views, they completed each other in ways he would've previously believed impossible.

Whatever rift their outlook differences created, they always seemed to find a way to mend it in two weeks...or shove it under the rug. Would it all snap one day? Dagon didn't know and frankly - feared thinking about it.

He almost snuck in through the window as per habit but after multiple occasions of objects being thrown at him or being literally speared into the wall, Dagon had to think twice.

Use the fethin' door like a normal person, Dag.

What's wrong with you??

Along with another dozen similar expletives thrown his way by Yula.

Yep, think twice.

The door opened and he slid in silently, a mischievous smirk on his face. Who doesn't like surprises?

Dagon doesn't.

Not the kind that greeted him on the couch, at least.

The smirk disappeared and his face lost all color - pale to match Yula's. Breathing ceased, it became second priority. First became Yula's well-being.

"Yula!" he shouted, but even he barely heard his voice as he rushed to her. Strong hands picked her up, tilting her to lay fully on the couch, putting her head on two pillows, "...babe..." fear was laced into his words, fear for her life. And then fear morphed into disappointment, "...what've you done..."

The Force stirred to life like a wildfire fueled by emotions running high. All the composure, all the control indoctrinated to him from a young age by the Jedi seemed to evaporate. Dogmatic warnings about attachments no longer echoed in his mind but rang like bells tolling violently against a storm. Dagon channeled the ethereal through his arms and into her form aiming to literally purge the narcotic from her systems. Unhinged.

Yula Perl

 

[Yula Perl]

The sweet delirium had lured her to sleep. A deep, dangerous sleep full of erratic heartbeats and ragged breathing. Dagon’s voice was a hundred miles away, so far past the surface of the water she was under. It stirred something in her, and his ministrations in the Force dragged her back above the surface. Violently so, like a hand grasping and dragging a drowning swimmer from the ocean before their lungs filled with saltwater.

The lid of her remaining eye flickered, a single green iris unfocused as it rolled around. The calm silence of the apartment had been disrupted by the sheer panic emanating from somewhere beside her. Above her. All around her, really.

“….?”

Yula squinted up at Dagon. She didn’t quite realize that the dread etched into his face was because of her.

“What’s…” Her voice, small and slurred, faded into fatigue and confusion. Yula tried to blink the hangover from her gaze, but it was impossible.

“Yer back.” She croaked. “How long…was I asleep for?”

Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

YULA,
ALWAYS YULA

Sweat broke on his forehead from the exerted energy; force healing had always been beyond his grasp and to an extent - beyond his interest. He slumped down on his backside level with Yula's delirious gaze. To her question, he wasn't sure how or what to reply. In the exhaustion crossing his eyes, there was both loving concern and grave outrage.

Dagon pulled his knee up, placing his forearm on it and readjusting his awkward sitting position on the parquet floor, then, "You weren't asleep, Yula." he threw an indicative glance at what lied on the coffee table.

He wished it was the hockey stick.

Yula Perl

 

[Yula Perl]

Something was wrong.

The fog was too thick for her to see what, though, no matter how hard she squinted. Something in Dagon’s voice, in the tremble of her hands, in the waves of her stomach. She shifted towards him, carefully, laboriously, dutifully ignoring the pounding of her head to run shaky fingertips across his brow. The simple act of brushing aside his hair, matted with sweat from exertion took immense coordination between her splitting head and her frayed nerves.

“Ya look…really tired.” Her voice tinged with reflexive concern. She followed his glance to the coffee table. Among the scattered tools and parts laid the needle, set neatly into the decorative groove that ran in a ring only inches from the table’s edge. Another reflex hit her mind, this one geared towards flipping the table over. It was a collection of her failures, a monument of disappointment.

Then it all came rushing back. Her nerves lit up like the lights of an arcade game, firing wildly. Despite her fatigue, the Zeltron shot upwards by the force of adrenaline alone, eye widened at horror in Dagon. She lingered for a moment, unable to speak, before leaning over and retching off the other side of the couch. She hadn’t eaten in hours, but her body still worked to empty the bile from her stomach. With sapped strength and an overworked heart beating rapidly, she collapsed heavily back onto the couch—onto the pillows Dagon had previously placed beneath her head.

“Feth…” She mumbled, the back of her hand resting over her mouth. “You weren’t…supposed to know.”

Probably not what he wanted to hear.

Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

He remained still as she brushed a lock of raven hair. To her it felt like lifting a wookie; so fragile, so drained was she from the spice. When she followed his glance, reality jolted her to sit up straight as an arrow.

One brief exchange of stares spoke enough for both. A moment later she spilled her guts on the floor and Dag staggered back up to find a rag and a glass of water. He froze on the threshold into the kitchen at what she said. Fist clenched the doorway's frame and it cracked under his strength leaving a reminder of today.

Dagon returned. Glass of water and napkins in one hand, and a wet rag in the other. Crouching down to her level again, he set aside the rag on the table for a moment and pulled her head softly back up.

"Drink. Small sips." you know the drill. He brushed sweaty tresses away from her face, unveiling the scar that crossed her missing eye, and gently wiped her lips and sides of her mouth with a napkin. His eyes deliberately evaded hers.

The elephant in the room would be addressed, that is certain.

Only when she's feeling an ounce better.

Yula Perl

 

[Yula Perl]

He was upset. Yula’s senses returned, tender from what she’d just put her body through, raw enough to touch the emotions that made the room feel so heavy. The sounds of Dagon in the kitchen broke the silence in a very deliberate way; she was hanging on the noise made by the brief rush of water from the faucet and the muted rip of paper towels.

And still, despite everything he must have been feeling, Dagon Kaze propped her up, urged her to drink, and wiped away the mess at her lips. The water felt good, wetting her parched throat and settling the roil of her stomach just enough. His hand felt gentle against her forehead, shifting the matted hair away from her face.

With lucidity came shame. Who was she to deserve such loving treatment?

A few long minutes passed, over which she gradually managed to get a third of the glass down. Her lips parted and she managed to speak, voice small, haggard, and carrying across the unsettled silence of the living room.

“I’m sorry that you had to see me like this again.”

Not sorry that she did it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“I don’t get it.” She touched the scar over her left eye, closed at the lid and sewn shut. “I wonder sometimes why I didn’t die on Krayiss. Part of me thinks I should have.” A single fingertip traced each stitch, slowly, carefully, as if she were memorizing a pattern that wasn’t there. “Then I remember why I didn’t—death would have been too easy. I wouldn’t have understood. Instead, I look at this every day and am reminded that I’ve only lived for myself."

She chuckled once, weakly, and it felt like her throat was coated in dust. A few sips of water righted her from a hacking fit, enough to continue. She wasn't even sure what had kickstarted this in the first place, but the words spilled out, tired of being held in. Yula took a deep breath and went on.

“I was mad at you, you know? When you were unconscious in the hospital after nearly being crushed to death in the library. I was upset that you left me on the battlefield. There I was, angry at you for saving other lives, almost dying in the process. Angry at you for being a hero.”

She shook her head, finding some ill humor in this as an unbalanced smile pulled at her lips. “I don’t…know if it’s right for me to feel this way. But it doesn't feel good. I cracked.”

Just like the glass eye, shattered across the floor.

Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

He maintained no eye contact with her as she talked, opting to look anywhere else but her. Whether it was adjusting her pillow, taking the glass or wiping the floor a bit more in a forced cycle of menial, but caring tasks to keep his mouth from releasing the demons. To him--and as much as he didn't want it to be that way--her words felt empty. Maybe it was the intense disappontment raging in his heart that filtered it that way but Dagon both wanted to be elsewhere and here at the same time. Elsewhere - so he wouldn't, as she said - see her like this; and here - so he could straighten her back.

Was the latter even possible anymore? Much like how her cybernetic eye had cracked on the garage floor, Dagon's infallible, unbreakable hope cracked. A small fissure in what seemed to be an indomitable wall.

Only when she brought up the events of Krayiss II did his eyes snap back on hers. A lump formed in his throat and his palms itched. The ghosts of the past were slithering through the crack and out in the open.

Gregarious by nature, Dagon was a man who always seemed to have what to say, but even he was lost for words. When they fought he'd find a way to have the last word before darting away through the window into the city to fight crime; what she said after (because she just couldn't help herself not having the last word, too) remained unheard by him. Silenced by the noise of the city, the cries of the oppressed, and the laughter of mooks. The city pulled him like the force of a thousand planets' gravity, called to him - escape.

But this is no fight.

This is...even I don't know what this is.

His heart wrenched as if clamped by a vise - a vise pressing all the hopes he had with the strength of all the fears he carried. Fears that a time would come when he would have to choose between her and his duty. And as stubborn as he was, his resolve to service always overcame his will to love.

Or was he deceiving himself? Was it all simply service from the start - just like she had said when they first met; his saviour complex, his need to feel personally responsible for others and lift them back. Was their relationship actually built on that? Was that all it amounted to in the end?

He wouldn't believe it, no -- he didn't believe it.

It couldn't be so.

Oh, brother, how I wish to be falling off rooftops or being roped to a chair in a murky warehouse, right now...

"I...I don't know..." he finally said, almost a whisper - his words trailed off. A long pause before he gathered a bit more strength in his voice, but the uncertainty in his tone remained, "What happened then...on Krayiss..." a hefty sigh blew through both mouth and nostrils, "...I had to do what I had to do..."

Whoa, Dag, you're goin' places - just not the places you really wanna be goin'--

He shook his head, feigning the same expression of steel as before despite the fissures evident on his face of iron, "You want more water?"

Yula Perl

 

[Yula Perl]

"...I had to do what I had to do..."

“I wanted you to choose me.”

His words rang between her ears, and anything Dagon said after that may as well have been ambient noise.

"And I was crushed that you didn't.”

She picked at the seam of the couch cushion, slowly plucking the loose string out of its stitching. Maybe the spice had smothered her natural fire for now, leaving only sadness in its wake. Anger was an emotion Yula and Dagon were adept at handling, comfortable with it in a way. Whatever this was…it was new territory for the both of them.

“Keep telling myself that it's wrong to think that way.”

He couldn’t have prevented the loss of her eye; Zaavik had struck and Dagon felt the call to be elsewhere. He’d turned his back on her to lift up his brothers and sisters of the New Jedi Order. They’d all survived in the end, but Yula didn’t know how she—how they—could move forward.

Yula was tired. The spice, the weight on her soul, she wore it all in the creases around her eyes and the droop of her normally sharp features. She could scrape together some ire if it were necessary, but for now she was exhausted. Exhausted and honest. Settling back onto the pillows, she fixed him with a one-eyed stare, fatigue dragging her voice a note lower.

“How long are we gonna keep hurting eachother for, Dag?”

Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

Dagon looked away. Both in shame and in unwavering certainty that he had taken the right choice. The two emotions intertwined in a dreadful singularity seeking to press his heart and mind combusted. Shoulder and head slumped down under the weight of burden. Love, duty and everything in between threatened to shatter him to pieces; a thousand fragments of himself ripped apart by the infinite dilemmas he faced. Every choice leaving a hefty imprint, much like the numerous scars crossing his body.

His love for her was genuine, but so was his commitment to duty. In past relationships, whether it was Ayana or Lyra, love and duty were not mutually exclusive. As short as intense were these romances - especially the former, both had their own commitments to service just like Dag. Ayana to the Defense Force and Lyra to the New Jedi. There was no middle ground to find.

But Yula was different.

Their bond only grew stronger with time and with each obstacle they overcame together, yet her heart was fully placed on family. She may have never explicitly said it - and as much as she called herself selfish - Yula's 'duty' was to her closed ones, to these bonds she formed and built. Not to patriotic causes nor religious ones. It's where Yula and Dag diverged, it's where the core of their problems was, and for one of the best investigators on this side of the galaxy, Dagon still could not find a solution to it. This was his curse. He'd told his mentor Asmundr as much - 'feels like i can solve every problem in the galaxy, except my own.'.

Disheveled locks of silken hair spread back across her face as she settled onto the pillows, the emerald color of her eye fading to the grey embrace of exhaustion, and her lips parted ways not for a kiss but for honest words she had kept locked away for so long. Words that felt like a rain of daggers on his heart and on his throat. He barely found the voice to reply, finally shifting his eyes back on her, "...never meant to hurt you, never; not then, not now, not ever—" he swallowed hard, lungs tightened and a glint crossed the sadness drawn across his eyes. He could no longer be a prisoner. Tired of the shackles, the burdens, the restraints. Exhausted from seemingly everything, he let it all loose. No more being torn apart, no more regrets. If it was all going to hell then...

All be damned.

"—I love you, Yula."

Yula Perl

 

[Yula Perl]

For the first time tonight, they managed to look each other in the eyes. Well, eye, in Yula’s case. Usually fatigue didn’t matter to them—there’d always be some fight left, some kindling of passion. Tonight they were simply, and completely, tired.

Often emotive to a fault, Yula’s expression didn’t change much when Dagon spoke. An eyebrow raised, and something in her expression seemed to tighten.

"—I love you, Yula."

Yeah, I know.

It was easier to curb the admission of feelings when he was still delirious from the painkillers. Heck, he’d even caught himself from saying it again once they’d begun to wear off.

“You sure about that?”

It was an honest question. for once, Yula couldn’t find it in herself to be mad at him. She wasn’t even sure if she was supposed to be mad.

“Do you really love me, or-“ She paused to swallow thickly, a visible sign that she was anxious. “-is…it just something that you want to be true?” Yula’s voice was unusually soft as she probed for an answer that would make sense to her.

Sure, Dagon looked after her well—even now, when she’d done something to make him upset, his first instinct was to see to her wellbeing and comfort. But Dagon was a Savior. The very first night they’d met, she’d warned him.

“I’m not some pity project for your savior complex, by the way. I ‘aint your problem to fix, Dag. Remember that.”

Was she just one big, complicated problem he wanted to solve?

Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

“You sure about that?”

If all the injuries, bruises, wounds, cuts, and gashes he had accumulated over his life were to rip open at once, they would've felt like a mosquito bite compared to Yula's response. It was all written in his expression, energized by the shock to contour his face in a grimace of hurt. There was no spite in her tone, no malice, not even the usual pettiness. It was a genuine question, truly, but it stang as much as a thousand lightsabers plunged into his guts.

The weight of sorrow pushed his mouth closed, zipped behind thin lips of disappointment, and eyes laden with pain looked away from her gaze. Yet, anywhere he looked he saw those lucid, but honest emerald eyes staring back at him.

“I’m not some pity project for your savior complex, by the way.” Her eyes, suddenly lucid, bore into his. For all her prior snark, Yula’s tone this time was honest and informational. “I ‘aint your problem to fix, Dag. Remember that.”

The same honest eyes that bore onto him from the couch. Exhausted and hurt, just like he was. Maybe even more.

He licked his lips, then took a deep breath shaking away the initial shock (as best as he could), and looked back at her.

A case to solve would've never hurt as much.

"I love you more than I want to," it was no reply; it was a confession.

Yula Perl

 

[Yula Perl]

With most of the spice forcibly purged from her body, Yula was lingering along the line of dreamy and lucid. Somehow, it helped her to express what she’d tried so hard to keep from Dagon; the shame and resentment that had nearly eaten her alive tonight. She spoke freely, the gears in her mind moving too slowly to recognize if this was a bad idea or not.

Judging by Dagon’s reaction, it may have been.

Slowly, her inhibitions began to filter in.

Despite being less than full-blooded, Yula had learned to hone her Zeltron empathy from a young age. Use of the Force only intensified it, and her mother had insisted on teaching her children how to understand and use it. An uncontrolled empath, Joza had said, was a walking disaster, ruled by the feelings of those around them.

Dagon was struggling more than he let on. Exhausted, hurt, yearning. Wanting to say the right thing, and wanting to be honest at the same time. When he said he’d never meant to hurt her, she believed him. But he made a decision that he knew would hurt her, and didn’t regret it.

Back and forth, back and forth. So many little signs that he truly cared for her, perhaps even genuinely loved her as he’d said.

Just…not in the way Yula wanted to be loved.

Am I asking for too much?

One hand dropped to her side, near where his head was resting. Slowly, fingers that were nearly skeletal from dehydration worked their way into his hair. Dagon had started out as a comfort, and had grown into something more important.

“After Krayiss, when you wouldn’t wake up—I was scared. And angry, of course. I’m always a little angry at you.” Her tone shifted to something a little more wry for a moment, recalling the truth to that statement. “When you finally woke up, all my anger dissolved like it hadn’t existed. I was so relieved I could cry.” Her fingers slowly shifted through his dark waves, brushing them back from his face. “I think that’s when I came to terms with the fact that I was in love with you.”

Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

He watched her, almost desperately, trying to pick up signs in her silence. Leads or clues that may tip him to the truth of her feelings; feelings he had until now been so certain of. Her questions to his admission of love had rattled him. Slowly, her digits reached for his hair and warmth surged on his weary face as if the sun had finally pierced through the overcast. The first rays of light after a wild storm at sea.

They made you feel alive.

His hand reached for hers, softly caressing her dehydrated skin. With the other, he cupped her battered with exhaustion face and leaned closer. Dagon's heart skipped a beat just like the first time and he kissed her dry lips.

"Go back to sleep, Yula Perl, you're talking nonsense." he murmured, a wide smirk crossing his face, "You're never angry with me."

Yula Perl