Through the Long Night

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Ivy Lasranae"]

Adekos tsked. "Oh, that's a same. S1-932A was rather excited to give the diagnosis himself." He looked over at the droid, which was starting straight ahead and giving absolutely no indication it was giving special attention to what was currently being discussed in front of it. Then he looked back at Hazel and, with a small nod, added. "I doubt he'll be the only one disappointed today."

He cracked open the folder and began thusly: "We found several dozen types of stims, unhealthy amounts, in your system. Energy boosters, adrenaline, painkillers... Sensory boosters, even. You're also malnourished, clearly suffering from sleep deprivation. Haven't had a full meal since... Well, now, I suppose. Your cybernetics also need better maintenance. I don't think they've seen professional care."

Unless of course Hazel considered "I take a hydrospanner to them myself every now and again or when they get angsty" as professional care. Which, he would assure her, virtually no one else did. Adekos had his own cybernetic arm for a while before he had a real one cloned for him. As much as he enjoyed utilizing droids, he had no desire to become one. But if he did have cybernetics, he certainly wouldn't be tampering with them himself.

"I think you can guess what I'm going to tell you is happening next."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"I don't make it over to Kuat as often as I'd like..." Hazel lifted her cybernetic arm and flexed the fingers, giving the limb a cursory look over before setting it on the table with a clank.

All that and she only felt compelled to remark on the arm. Really, the arm was the only thing she didn't have complete control over the end result. Both mechanical limbs took a beating and despite having lost them already, Hazel did not live her life any safer than she had before. These sorts of sacrifices were par for the course of the Proten. The Merc didn't look at Gerion for some time, letting her gaze drift off to somewhere beyond their conversation at the table.

During the outbreak of the Gulag Plague stims sometimes meant the difference between life and death. Rations had become nearly as valuable as bacta, and as scarce. You learned to live on bare essentials when the lives of your crew were on the line. You became addicted as you watched your crew and resources dwindle to nothing, one by one, until all you had left were their memories... or their nightmares.

Hazel blinked, metallic fingers trilling along the table, and then stood from her chair. Slow, heavy steps rounded the table to Gerion until she stood before him, looking up with a sober expression,

"Can't read minds, Tyrin."

A moment later her natural hand settled onto his chest and gave a firm, sudden push towards the chair nearby. She moved to straddle his lap and set down without any preamble. Head canted a degree to the side in lieu of the blindness of her right eye and hands lifted to settle on the man's shoulders, casual-like, before they moved to unlatch the clasp of his helmet and lift the accursed thing away.

"But I'm willing to bet what's about to happen next wasn't on your itinerary."

[member="Darth Adekos"]

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Ivy Lasranae"]

"Well, you should, seeing as your servomotors need-... Excuse you! Sit back d-"

Darth Adekos, or more appropriately just Tyrin since the mechanics of this current situation made it no longer appropriate to address him with 'Darth,' (seeing as the title commanded respect and authority, none of which he suspected he received from Hazel) should have known better by now. When she got that look in her eyes, or just eye as it currently was, there was no point in talking about anything else. He managed to quickly close the file and slide it onto the table before she crossed around fully, putting one hand on his chest and pushing him into a chair.

And, lo, the straddling did commenceth. There was much rejoicing on Tyrin's part, but not as much rejoicing as there would soon be.

The helmet unsealed easily enough and she set it on the table. Once again, Tyrin's marred face was bared to the open air. He couldn't possibly understand why she would do so. Tyrin made a mental note to check that she wasn't blind in both eyes when this was done and over with. But for now, there they were- two elderly cyclopes, one straddling the other while he lightly caressed her face. A third party observer might have been disgusted, Tyrin privately thought, although that did remind him of something else.

"Get out."

The droid shuffled out without protest to return to the medical bay.

Once the doors were shut again, his arms wrapped around her. "How is it I am cursed to love a woman-" He hefted her up, carrying her over to the bed. The captain's chair made it something of a novelty the last time, but if there were better options available now (this bed did not have a salivating death-hound lounging about on it), he was inclined to take it. "-whose immediate reaction to a dire medical report is to continue seducing me."

He dropped her onto the bed without any further ceremony, now free to remove his gloves- which he did -and followed up by tossing them haphazardly over his shoulder. This was perhaps the farthest the author was willing to go in describing the undressing, or really anything else, as rapid blood loss through the nose had rendered further writing, articulation, or even coherent thought difficult at best and impossible at worse.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

She was taking those moments of shock to inspect his new face. No hint of disgust or regret to be seen on her own, Hazel regarded it only with the look of concerned acceptance. It was what it was, no amount of anything would change the fact that the same man remained firmly emplaced beneath it. Someone, she had come to realize, she'd grown a bit fond of. Even for his fumbling.

Especially for his fumbling.

Patient was the Merc, amused even as the man ordered the droid out. As if the droid mattered. Pleased as the cat who ate the canary, the notion became her expression - not quite cheshire grin, no teeth but a broadening, easy smirk. Flesh and metallic fingers clutched at his neck as he lifted her, and all the internal mechanisms continued running smoothly until that word left his lips.

"How is it I am cursed to love a woman-"

Love.

Love.

Love?

"-whose immediate reaction to a dire medical report is to continue seducing me."

Hazel blinked, dumbfounded, and felt herself slip from his arms to the bed below, landing gracelessly. Brown hair ruffled across her face and she pushed it back in time to catch him casually tossing his gloves away. A rueful smirk returned as the man advanced upon her and the Merc met him half way by sitting up on her elbows.

"I learned to live in the moment a long time ago," the Merc replied in a low voice, eyes taking in his face for a moment before pressing up to his lips, her natural hand lifting to the collar of his robes, "call me Ivy," she pulled him back with her.

The intelligible response muffled between lips only made her grin widen.

[member="Darth Adekos"]

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Ivy Lasranae"]

Once that was taken care of and all parties involved were finished basking in the afterglow, Tyrin gathered back his attire from the various sections of the room they had been flung to and dressed himself back up. Minus the helmet of course, since apparently that was unnecessary now. "The surgery to repair your sight and hearing will be in a few days while my assistant orders the necessary cybernetics." He said, returning back to business. Truth be told, he had learned to keep his itinerary flexible where Hazel, or Ivy now as he had been told, was concerned. There had been an ample amount of time in between him being here and the next thing he needed to look into. Mostly government stuff, nothing anybody wanted to read about.

He wandered over to the device that passed for a mini-fridge and took a bottle out of it. Water. It was all water. Specifically at his instruction. Tyrin tossed one to Ivy and then took another for himself. "You'll be resting until then. After that, we're getting you off the stims for good." He said, tone implying the finality of the matter.

This was what he had been building towards prior, but of course she had to find a way to knock all the wind out of him. "Any questions, Ivy?"

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Surgery.

Rest.

Waterbottle.

She hadn't bothered to redress - not that she had much to put back on. Medical robes could hardly be considered clothing in any form, so the Merc remained nude on the bed contemplating the struggle between its comfort and the various memories attached to said comfort. The sorts of memories that turned plush material into painful nails on the mind.

Someone once told her it was all in her head, these ghost pains that haunted her. Ivy knew it to be true as much as she knew the ghost pains to be real. Numbed now from hours spent wallowing in the present with the man now currently picking his black robes off the floor and pulling them back on. His words echoed, muffled, Ivy turned her head to the right to pull her good eye and ear around to listen and see. They'd be back, the ghost pains, this she also knew. Hours after he left when she had nothing but her own thoughts for company and, apparently, nothing to help ease them from her mind.

Ivy flexed her left arm, feeling without really feeling, knowing the sensation of cotton sheets but not really experiencing it. Metal fingerpads slipped over material that might as well not even have been there. Her right hand mimed the action if only to remind herself it really was there.

The bottle landed on the bed somewhere near her side, rolling to rest against the cybernetic leg. Electronic neurons told her it was there, firing synthetic sensation to her mind. It could have been a bomb for all the leg knew - metal and wires didn't have a sixth sense like flesh, blood and bone did. Muscles coiled, scars pulled across sinew as she rolled to sit up, legs moving to dangle over the edge of the mattress, hand of flesh snagging the bottle before it fell away.

Every technologically advanced civilization in the galaxy and somehow they had yet to fully retire the plastic bottle. Ivy gave a mirthless chuckle at the irony as she opened the top and took a drink. Water would never be as satisfying as a tumbler of Reserve. She'd been spoiled, perhaps.

"Yeah," a brow quirked at the man as she turned to look at him again, "am I a prisoner of this room or am I free to move about the ship?"

[member="Darth Adekos"]

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Ivy Lasranae"]

A prisoner of the room. Pah. As if Tyrin were about to yank off another mask and reveal himself to be Jared Ovmar, who would then glide avant-gardly out of the room with a spontaneously generated cigar between his teeth, locking her in for the long haul. Not that it hadn't crossed Tyrin's mind. Back when he had been turning the dregs of Coruscant's underworld into colonists against their will, one of the preferred methods of detoxing them had been to lock them in cells until they were done withdrawing all over the place. But that was usually only done after other methods to clean them up had failed. Besides, Ivy was no gutter-rat too doped up on the drug of the month to know what was going on, destined to be a dirt farmer on some unnamed forest moon. She inherently deserved better treatment.

"You're free to roam, don't be silly." He eventually said, gesturing to a wardrobe that was on the opposite side of the room. It had been stocked since the day she arrived. "There are some clothes in there for you. There are gyms, mess halls, libraries, and a lounge if you want to socialize with the crew. The droids will stop you if you go anywhere you're not supposed to be."

And there were, of course, several corridors that now had a pair of TA4s hanging around them. These were generally the corridors that would lead to sections of the ship cordoned off for his apprentices. Or, in this case, the increasingly recalcitrant [member="Spark Finn"]. Maybe he would send her to hang out with Darth Orcus if she kept up her current behavioral problems. The Herglic seemed to have a better time instilling loyalty in his disciples, and he didn't even need some strain of the technovirus to do it, unlike some certain other creatures he could name.

"Think you'll need anything else?"

 

[Hazel Scheler]

She followed his gesture to the wardrobe and was on her feet, slowly making her way over, brow strained as body made due with the lack of full perception. A moment to rifle through some of the drawers found her holding a bra in her hand of, remarkably, the proper size. A sideways hairy eye was given to the man as she began to dress.

"My armor," Ivy replied after pulling a tshirt on before picking out a pair of what appeared to be military style casual pants. All her sizes. He had all her sizes. Fething scanner droids. She pulled them on.

[member="Darth Adekos"]

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Ivy Lasranae"]

Tyrin held up his hands in apparent surrender when she gave him a nasty look. As if making sure he didn't waste his money on ill-fitting attire made him the bad guy. It wasn't like he did all the measurements himself. Watching her stagger around squinting, however, did pull at his heart strings. Or rather, the strings that should have connected to his heart but in reality were tethered to a swirling, black vortex through which only money, lust, and withering sarcasm left.

"Your armor?" He echoed. "I hope you're not expecting a firefight to break out on my ship. Either way, it's still being repaired."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Shirt tucked beneath the hem of her pants, Ivy pulled a coiled belt from the drawer and slipped it through the loops, cinching it together as she turned to Tyrin and strode over. "It's not the armor, it's what was in it," Ivy's hands were on her hips when she came to a stop before the man, brow knit, "the book I told you about. It was secured in an internal compartment in the breastplate. I need it."

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Ivy Lasranae"]

Tyrin looked like he was remembering something for a moment, then it came to him. "Oh, yes, you did mention that when we pulled you out." There was a nightstand in the room, over by the bed, which at first he indicated but then just resolved to get it himself. Better to avoid having her stagger around any longer than necessary. "The technicians found it with your armor. I certainly didn't know what it was, so I had someone just bring it up here."

The drawer creaked open. This was old furniture, but it was in good condition. The perks of stealing a Lucrehulk typically meant that it came furnished. And when the Death Watch, the first Death Watch, stole it from pirates, it still had the classy Neimoidian-style furnishings and decor of the core merchants they had stole it from. He handed it over to Ivy, but not without comment. "You should consider digitizing it. More secure that way. Easier to carry."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

It was a small book, thin and malleable from years of following the Merc around the galaxy. The leather casing had softened and worn from countless nights of use when she could not or would not sleep. Ivy had a feeling she was about to encounter many more sleepless nights, those potential nights spent in the company of this particular Space Wizard notwithstanding. He wanted to take away the things that drove away her demons and, Ivy knew, she did not do this willingly or lightly.

Fingers of both flesh and metal firmly grasped the journal as he handed it to her, the same grip a mother might have on a child whose very life depended on it. The Merc loosed a breath of relief, smoothed her natural hand over the leather face before stowing it away in a side cargo pocket of her pants.

"It's not something that can be digitized," she said finally, "its value is sentimental. Irreplaceable."

 

[Caulder Dune]

He raised an eyebrow, regarding her treatment of the old book with interest. Like she had just rescued her own flesh and blood from some gruesome, off-screen fate. It piqued his interest, to say the least. "Your journal?" Tyrin asked. He had assumed it was as much, and so had and dutifully refused to leaf through it. Then again, he didn't know any sort of journal that someone wouldn't be willing to just digitize and get it over with.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"Not mine," Ivy replied, brow setting over her eyes, gaze casting off to a corner somewhere for a short moment, "someone else's." the Merc's hazel eyes settled back on Tyrin, steeled like a hardened cage containing a myriad things within, "thank you for returning it. I...don't know what I would do if I lost it."

It being the only key piece of her former life left to speak of.

And there it was, the foreboding had set in. Without stims or alcohol this was going to prove to be a long, miserable journey.

Ivy frowned and released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, "I'm sure you've lots to tend to. Don't let me keep you."

[member="Darth Adekos"]

 

[Caulder Dune]

This sounded so terribly sentimental, but Tyrin had never been big on sentiments, bar a few extraordinary cases. Ivy was tensed up stiffer than a durasteel girder. Definitely not remembering anything nice. Or maybe it was nice and then it went tragic, just like everything else in this abysmal galaxy. Adekos could only speculate- would only speculate. Just like she said, he had more important things to attend to. "It's a tempting thought, but of course you're right."

He gave her a peck on the cheek and turned to leave, sliding his helmet back over his head. "I'll be back in a few hours."

In another moment the doors had opened again, Adekos passing through the doorway and making his way back to the bridge.

[member="Ivy Lasranae"]

 

[Hazel Scheler]

The Merc watched the Sith leave the room, eyes passing around as the door hissed shut.

"Few hours...right."


She had no intention of staying in the room for a few hours. Ivy Egris Lasranae was a woman of action and also a woman honest with herself, and right now she knew that she honestly wouldn't be able to take this room for very long given the likelihood that she'd be physically stuck and/or locked within it in the not too distant future. Especially if Tyrin was serious about following through on rehabbing her. It wasn't going to be pretty, of this she was certain.

A walk was in order. Or perhaps a stagger, as it were. The Merc gracelessly staggered from the room not shortly after his exit and began to walk the halls. After some time, practice, a bit of adjustment, the stagger developed into a shuffle and then into a trudge. Ivy found that if she kept her eyes...rather, eye focused on close objects such as the floor or a nearing doorway it wasn't so hard to navigate. Adaptability was the key to survival after all, and much like any other plan she had to know she was capable of moving if need be.

Just in case the Sith went rogue or, more likely, her brain finally snapped from the withdrawal.

Eventually she found herself at the head of a very long and very narrow hall. After some time of trudging her mind had grown tired of translating the broken perception with which she operated. A headache flared. Ivy found a bench settled before an expanse of long viewports lining the hall that offered a view of space beyond the Lucrehulk. The Merc settled onto it and eased back against the support, both arms lifting to rest along the top.

Perhaps he would find her here, perhaps not. Neither would surprise the woman, considering the only other forms on the ship were robotic in nature.

A cigarette would be perfect right about now. And a glass of whiskey.

Feth.

 

[Caulder Dune]

Dealing with convicted felons was always such a chore. Especially when it came to signing off on their entechments. So much babbling. "No, I didn't do it!" They say. "I'm being framed, framed I tell you!" "This is kangaroo court!" On and on. No one ever wanted to go along quietly. They had to make a whole fuss about it, like the whole galaxy was revolving around them. It always fell to Adekos to remind them that things would keep on spinning without them. Besides, it wasn't like they were actually dying. More like their souls were being sucked out of their bodies to power electrical grids, mining equipment, and star ship reactors. Manual labor was too good for these sorts, these murderers, drug smugglers, and rapists. There were more creative ways to both pay their debt to society and endure sufficient punishment.

A lifetime of pain to keep the lights on at the local soup kitchen seemed fitting.

Once Darth Adekos had finished listening to these final pleas, he pardoned none, and departed from his office. The whole affair took place via hologram and the entechments would take place seventy two hours from now. It was a minor annoyance, but one the Triumvirs took in shifts. Orcus would be reviewing the next batch. It usually didn't matter which Triumvir handled the paperwork. Pardons were rare and saved for those with irreplaceable skills and containable vices. If Adekos recalled correctly, one of their best engineers had been something of a cannibal. Or not cannibal, what was it... Anzati? Killed a lot of people, but that was just their nature. Just as well, his armor designs prior to his arrest had shown promise. Promise enough to land him a new identity while a mock execution was staged elsewhere.

Ten, twenty minutes into his stroll he happened upon where Ivy was sitting, sprawled out along a bench settled just before a viewport. "Admiring the view, are we?" It was meant to be a joke. There was nothing to look at except inky blackness and the vague outlines of stars as they zipped by. Adekos preferred it when his ship was constantly on the move. Being in hyperspace most of the time made it harder for misfits and cretins to board his Lucrehulk and steal his things.

[member="Ivy Lasranae"]

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Breathing deep and steady, she was about as close to falling asleep as she was to having a conversation with herself. Neither would be terribly out of character for the Merc who'd spent the last twenty years of her life sleeping with her back against a wall and a weapon in her lap - prepared for any inevitable end. The conversations had only developed after the last of her squad fell to her shortcomings.

Sephoria had fallen on Kinooine under heavy fire from a band of Pirates. Ivy hadn't been capable of saving her, only just steps away.

She used to talk to her dog.

"Yeah," came her weary reply, natural hand moving to rub at her eyes. She'd stopped seeing the streaks of starlight for the reflection of the ship in the glassteel instead. All manner of things were seen in those windowpanes when the stims and the alcohol wore off. Ivy wiped the image of her sister-in-law from her mental gaze as she turned to glance at [member="Darth Adekos"] curiously.

"No one ever really just looks at stars anymore," Ivy said as she turned back to face the windows, eyes shut against the dull throbbing of her head, "we just treat them like some dull commodity. There's no more sense of wonder in this galaxy."

"What's your favorite star, Tyrin?"

 

[Caulder Dune]

It was difficult to maintain a sense of wonder in a galaxy that possessed cheap, reliable, and fast space travel for the better part of recorded history. More difficult than that would be treating stars as anything other than 'dull commodities.' There were trillions of stars in this galaxy, trillions of stars outside of this galaxy, and trillions of stars in bizarre pocket dimensions that required eldritch hyper drives to reach. They were balls of burning gas. Unless they had the rare make-up where harvesting them with the Sun Razer was feasible, there was nothing special about them.

He might have said as much if he were talking to anyone else, but instead he just took a seat on the bench next to her and gave a more tempered response. "Simulac, I suppose. In the Umbara system."

Simulac was a later-phase star, burning only a fraction as bright as others in the galaxy. The fact that it was also enshrouded in the infamous Ghost Nebula meant precious little light ever reached Umbara, leaving it in a nice, soothing darkness almost all the time. A real paradise for Umbarans, but a gloomy stretch of doldrums for anyone else.

"Your's?"

[member="Ivy Lasranae"]

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"Umbara..." Ivy had to think about why that sounded familiar and when she finally recalled she felt a little uncomfortable with how long it had taken, "that's right. You're from Umbara. I remember that evening well."

The woman glanced over at the man sitting beside her, a fleetingly faint smile somewhere muddled within the scars on her face, "Your hair was shorter then." It was like deja vu. Had she said that to him before? Ivy swept her fingers through her hair, pushing it out of her eyes as she looked back to the viewport and saw the reflection of them sitting there backdropped by hyperlines.

Ivy made a thoughtful noise as he turned the question back to her, "Ever been to the Red Nebula?"

[member="Darth Adekos"]