Private Tit For Tat

[Muad Dib]

He awoke slowly. The silk sheets of the bed hugged his body with a velvety caress. Not as soft as the skin belonging to the woman nestled against his chest. Her golden hair lay splayed along the pillow with more than a few strands straying across her face. Gently, his fingers gathered them back behind her ear before leaving a feathered kiss against her forehead. With conscious effort, he eased from the bed, trying not to wake her from deep slumber. When he passed the dresser, he claimed his dark trousers and cream colored tunic. He paused in the doorway of the bedroom, watching her in the embrace of a restful sleep. Carefully he closed the door behind him before turning to the large living room adjacent to the sleeping quarters.

They had arrived on Olanet the night before, caught in torrential rain that drowned every detail of the outside, in hurricane-force winds. The lights were off when they entered the doors on the eastern side of the palatial mansion; floor-to-ceiling transparent steel glass would have allowed the evening stars and moons to cast a luminous glow on the neighboring garden and reveal the interior. But the storm kept everything shrouded. Instead, they eased through the shadowed living room that Derek affectionately called his war room.

It was anything but a war room. Where the glass walls revealed the landing pad outside before nearing a stone wall perimeter against the edge of a cliff that overlooked the ocean, the interior held a long dining table of mahogany with twelve equally ornate chairs along its length. Near the corner opposite where the guest bedroom lay was a massive desk with piles of papers littering the gargantuan frame. A chair lay tucked behind it. But it was the other half of the room both brothers appreciated. The marble floors stepped down into the rest of the room. Opposite the glass wall was a magnificent fireplace, a mantle with several items of personal interest. Several static pictures of adults and children smiling hung in the frames, while miscellaneous items littered the space between. An old pocket watch, the exterior scratched from long use. A journal with an imprint of a torch on the old cream colored leather. A small crystal that glowed red. Even a clock at the center, made entirely of crystal and glass. Each tick of the second hand released a faint chime.

On either side of the fireplace, and well above the mantle, were bookshelves filled with innumerable volumes that stretched two stories into the solid beams of the rafters upwards. An old ladder attached to the shelves on either side. In front of the white balinka rug placed before the fireplace was a large sectional, each end curving out with an equal stretch of couch. A glass coffee table ran the length of the sectional; more artifacts and books cluttered the surface. It could easily have been mistaken for a library due to the sheer number of books. Two stories up hung a pair of massive chandeliers, intricate crystals hanging delicately from gold cordage. Every crystal glowed with a soft yellow ambient light, which transformed the otherwise imposing room into a cozy, intimate space.

Muad pulled his pants on, securing the belt and his ever-present kal at the small of his back, before slipping the tunic over his head. Hands shoved the sleeves up as he silently padded over to a long hallway beside the desk. Down the long corridor, he shook his head at the sounds of several offices busy at work. When he became senator, he swore there was no way he was going to go into the "office". So he brought the office to him. Half the mansion had turned large bedrooms, dining rooms, and other rooms he had no idea what the purpose was for, into remote offices for advisors and the like. Thankfully, Derek had the same idea when he was senator, so the rooms were already prepared.

But it was the weekend, and any work the members on his staff performed was meant not to bother him with anything, sort of an invasion. With half the mansion renovated into workspace, it still left nearly ten thousand feet for privacy. He entered a small alcove in the kitchen and started making something to eat, planning to return to the war room. Then, if Rin hadn't roused and begun exploring, he would wake her gently.

Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

Rin did not wake when Muad slipped from beneath the sheets. She had slept more deeply than she expected, lulled by the steady rhythm of the rain against the windows and the familiar presence beside her. Sometime during the night, she had apparently migrated closer, finding his warmth without ever consciously deciding to do so. It was becoming an increasingly familiar habit, one she suspected Marta would have found deeply amusing after their conversation. The brush of his fingers through her hair and the kiss against her forehead stirred something at the edge of sleep, but not enough to pull her completely from it. She shifted into the warmth he left behind instead, one hand settling where his chest had been before sleep claimed her again.

It wasn't until several minutes later that Rin became aware that something was missing. Her brow furrowed against the pillow before golden eyes slowly opened, finding an unfamiliar room washed in the soft gray light of morning. For one confused moment, she couldn't remember where she was. Then Olanet returned to her in pieces, beginning with the storm that had battered their arrival the previous evening and the mansion they had barely been able to appreciate through the darkness and rain. The next memory came with the realization that the other half of the bed was empty, though the lingering warmth beneath her hand told her Muad had not been gone for long. Through the bond, she could feel him nearby, awake and perfectly well, which dispelled any concern before it could form.

Rin remained where she was for another moment, looking at the indentation he had left in the pillow. After everything Marta had told them, she had expected the connection to feel somehow different once they left Veradune. Instead, it felt remarkably ordinary. Muad was simply there, resting somewhere at the edge of her awareness without intruding upon her thoughts. There was comfort in it she hadn't anticipated, particularly after learning just how extraordinary their connection might become. Marta's warning remained with her, but so did the far simpler truth Rin had carried away from the conversation. Whatever the Force had done to connect them, everything they chose to place within that connection remained theirs. She had meant what she told him. She would have chosen him anyway.

A small smile found her as she finally pushed herself upright and swept the loose fall of hair away from her face. Much of her long, warm brown hair, threaded naturally with lighter sandy-blonde and sun-gold strands, had escaped its braids during the night. Several loosened sections hung around her shoulders while wisps framed her face, leaving the rest in a state that would require patience and a mirror to properly repair. Rin looked down at herself, then toward the closed door, and briefly entertained the idea of simply remaining exactly where and as she was. The bed was exceptionally comfortable, the storm had left the morning cool, and she could feel Muad somewhere beyond the bedroom. Unfortunately, the faint smell of food eventually reached her, providing an argument even the bed couldn't overcome.

She dressed in the clothing she had abandoned the night before, taking enough time to gather her hair into some semblance of order before quietly opening the bedroom door. Only then did Rin get her first proper look at the room they had crossed in darkness the previous evening, and she stopped just beyond the doorway as her gaze traveled upward. She had known the mansion was large. That had been difficult to miss even in the middle of a storm, but knowing something and actually seeing it were very different experiences. The scale of the room alone made her pause, though it was not the marble, chandeliers, or expensive furnishings that held her attention for long.

The books caught her first. There were enough of them to make Rin temporarily forget the sheer scale of everything else around her. Her gaze followed the shelves upward toward the rafters, lingering upon the ladders before dropping to the fireplace and the collection arranged across its mantle. Those interested her even more than the grandeur of the room. The mansion itself spoke of wealth, but the battered pocket watch, old journal, photographs, and peculiar little objects spoke of people. Someone had chosen to keep each one. Someone remembered where it came from and why it mattered. Rin found herself drifting closer, careful not to touch anything as she studied the photographs, then the strange red crystal, before her attention settled upon the delicate clock at the center. Its quiet chime seemed almost impossibly small inside such a massive room, and for several moments she was content simply to listen to it while taking in pieces of a home that already told her more about its occupants than the size of the building ever could.

The sound of movement elsewhere finally reminded her that she had originally come out looking for someone. She followed the smell of food toward the kitchen, although the bond made locating Muad considerably easier than following her nose. Rin slowed when she found him in the alcove, content for a few seconds to lean lightly against the entrance and watch him without announcing herself. There was something almost amusingly domestic about the sight after the strange road that had brought them here. She had met him bleeding beside a crashed ship, traveled with him through danger, watched him nearly die and then somehow found herself sharing a bed with him without either of them quite understanding when that had begun to feel normal. They had not crossed the lines that might ordinarily be assumed from that arrangement, despite Muad's remarkable inability to explain it to anyone without making it sound otherwise. Somehow that made the simple intimacy of waking beside him feel more meaningful rather than less. Now he was standing in a kitchen making something to eat as though this were simply another morning, and Rin found herself liking the sight more than she probably should have.

Her smile deepened before she finally spoke, the familiar words coming so naturally that she barely thought about them. "There you are." Hearing herself say it brought Marta immediately to mind, and the realization warmed something inside her. She had carried those three words away from Veradune long before she ever understood how deeply the older woman had shaped her. Now they had followed Rin across the galaxy and somehow found Muad too.

She stepped farther into the kitchen, still looking faintly sleep-tousled despite her efforts to repair her hair, and glanced toward whatever he was preparing. "I was beginning to think the bed had eaten you. Which would have been unfortunate, because I was actually getting used to having you there." Her ears warmed almost immediately at her own admission, but Rin refused to retreat from it. After everything they had discussed with Marta and Chek, pretending she hadn't grown accustomed to his presence seemed rather pointless. There was a difference between admitting she liked waking beside him and pretending they had crossed a line they had not, and for once she wasn't going to let embarrassment turn something simple into something complicated.

Rin moved beside him and glanced toward the corridor she had noticed on her way in, faint sounds carrying from somewhere deeper within the enormous house. There were clearly people awake and working despite the hour and what she understood to be the weekend, which sharpened her curiosity. "I thought this was supposed to be your brother's home. I didn't realize we'd wandered into a government building last night." There was humor in the observation rather than criticism, though curiosity drew her eyes toward the corridor again before she looked back at Muad. "There are people working down there, aren't there?" The idea that someone had apparently decided the easiest solution to avoiding an office was to put the office inside the house struck Rin as the sort of logic she suspected made considerably more sense to Muad than it did to her.

Her attention wandered back toward the vast room beyond the kitchen while she waited, and this time the morning light drew her gaze past the furnishings to the towering transparent walls. The storm had hidden almost everything when they arrived, reducing the outside world to darkness, rain, and fleeting shapes beyond the glass. Now Rin could finally see what had been concealed from her. Her eyes caught first upon the grounds immediately outside, lingering on a garden she hadn't known existed before traveling farther toward the stone perimeter. Beyond it, the land seemed to simply disappear, giving way to an immense stretch of water extending toward the horizon. The discovery held her for several seconds. She hadn't known either was there, and quiet wonder softened her features as she took in the view. Apparently the books weren't going to be the only thing capable of distracting her for hours.

Food eventually won enough of her attention back for Rin to reach over and steal a small piece of whatever was easiest to claim. Her expression remained perfectly innocent as she sampled it, although the quick flick of her golden eyes toward Muad suggested she knew precisely what she was doing. "You were taking too long." The excuse came before any accusation could possibly be made, and she leaned lightly against the counter as she chewed. Her gaze wandered over him for another moment before softening. There was something peaceful about seeing him like this, away from ruins, caravans, artifacts, and battles. Marta and Chek's words returned to her unexpectedly, particularly the reminder that a life containing violence did not have to belong entirely to violence. Rin had understood the lesson when they shared it, but standing here now made it feel less abstract. Peace did not necessarily mean abandoning everything they were. Sometimes perhaps it was only this, a quiet morning stolen between whatever waited on either side of it.

She bumped her shoulder gently against his arm before tipping her head toward the enormous room behind them. "So, once you feed me, you're showing me around." Her gaze drifted toward the windows again, amusement and curiosity brightening her golden eyes. "Because I saw almost nothing when we arrived, and you've brought an explorer into a house with two stories of books. I've also just discovered there's an entire garden outside and apparently an ocean at the bottom of the property." Her attention returned to him with a small smile, the excitement of discovering somewhere new already beginning to push away the last remnants of sleep. "You really should have anticipated the consequences."

For all her eagerness, Rin made no immediate move toward the door or the shelves. Instead, she remained beside him, comfortably close without needing to think about exactly how close that had become. There would be time enough for the books, the strange objects on the mantle, the garden and whatever lay beyond the edge of the property. For now, there was breakfast, a quiet morning after the storm, and the warmth of Muad's presence resting against hers through a connection they were only beginning to understand. After Marta and Chek's warnings, Rin knew there were questions ahead of them that neither could answer yet, but she also knew they didn't need to answer all of them at once. Sometimes the next mile could simply begin with breakfast.

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

It had grown amazingly familiar, the way he could sense the moment she stirred from sleep. The grin tugging at his lips as he caught a glimpse of a reflection- the untidy mane of her hair- could not be suppressed. However, he did consciously remove his sight from hers. After everything discussed in the mountainside kitchen, he still felt a bit of wonder at their bond. And he looked forward to exploring it further still.

One skillet held the makings of several omelets while the other cooked the meat. Bacon, sausage links, and slices of nerf steak simmered away as he felt her presence behind him. This wasn't due to their connection but thanks to his nose. The familiar scent of sandalwood and vanilla managed to pierce the haze of cooking food. When she appeared beside him, snatching a piece of bacon, he let out a little growl. "You should wait for the chef to finish. Although I'm not wearing the apron that demands the cook gets a kiss. It should still count." He winked at her as he turned off the range and grabbed the skillets before leading the way back to the long lacquered table beside the glass walls. The pans were distributed onto the table without any cloth to keep the heated metal from the wood.

"Don't worry about the varnish. Derek took care of that a long time ago." He moved to the wall behind the desk and touched a spot that raised it, revealing fine china and cutlery. He collected enough for three before returning to the table. "I'm glad it was storming last night. Otherwise I would never have been able to get you into bed before exploring became the first thing on your mind." He tossed her a pointed wink and a smile, clearly too satisfied with what he said. Once the table was set, he moved to where she was still glancing at the view outside and wrapped his arms around her waist. Their foreheads found the comfortable pose against one another.

"You know, I have this insatiable appetite. I wonder where it came from …" His nose caressed her cheek as his lips angled for her ear.

"It's probably because your diet consists of what normal people would toss in the recycle bin." The voice came from across the room; the deep bass timbre sounded like Muad, yet different. It was the difference between rotgut whiskey and a fine wine allowed to breathe the appropriate amount of time. Muad smirked as he pulled back from Rin, the teasing intention of what he was about to do clearly evident in his eyes. "Rin Taal, meet Derek Dib. My much older brother."

A deep laugh followed Derek as he walked across the marble floor. He was dressed formally: black slacks, a jacket, and a buttoned-up shirt with only the top button unclasped. The color accented his equally dark hair and stubble. He was paler than Muad. But the most striking difference between the two was the eyes. Where Muad's glowed a bright blue, Derek's eyes burned a deep crimson like the coals in a fire. However, the genuine smile on his face disarmed the stern gaze and sharp features.

"If I'm older, then I am a fine wine. You, sir, are moonshine fresh from the still." Muad disengaged himself from Rin's body and slipped into one of the ornate chairs, a smirk on his face. Derek approached and extended a hand to Rin before taking her fingers and raising her hand to kiss the back of her hand lightly. "A pleasure, Miss Taal. It is, Miss, correct." His eyes flashed a bright red for a moment before releasing her hand and moving to the other side of the table where Muad had placed the third set of dishes. "You realize I can still kill you? At the very least, I can poke some holes in your ego and let you deflate some. But the smell would be horrible."

The brothers glared at one another, each reaching for the cutlery. Derek gripped a knife. Muad a spoon. The tension mounted for several seconds before Derek glanced down and saw what item Muad held. Then a small smile etched his lips upward.

"You cheated, bastard."
"Whore."
"Warmonger."
"Is that an insult? Slimy politician."
"That one doesn't count. You're the senator, I'm merely the president."
"It still stands."
"Touche."

As Derek divided the food between the plates, Muad reached out and found Rin's hand, even as he slouched in his chair. Derek's crimson gaze took in the gesture while he finished with the food and sat.

"Serious?"
"As a Jawa arm wrestling a Wookiee."
"That is the most decidedly vivid picture you have described."
"I'm in."
"Is she?"
"Why don't you ask her yourself?"

Derek steepled his fingers in front of his face, eyes peering over the top, as he looked Rin in the eyes and asked, "What are your intentions with my baby brother?" The slight curve of a smile twitched the edges of his lips as he waited for a response. Muad merely smirked beside Rin, absolutely no help at all.

Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

Rin's gaze followed Muad as he carried the skillets toward the table, though the faint smile on her lips had considerably more to do with his comment about the apron than breakfast. She stole another bite from the strip of bacon in her hand and made no effort whatsoever to look repentant. The view beyond the glass kept drawing her attention back, mostly because she was finally able to see what the storm had hidden from her the night before. She had known the house was large from the portions they had crossed upon arriving, but daylight gave her the first real sense of just how different this place was from the homes carved into the mountains or nestled among the forests of Veradune.

His comment about getting her into bed earned him an immediate sideways look. "You make that sound considerably more impressive than it was." The warmth beginning at the tips of her ears betrayed her despite the dryness of her response. "There was a storm outside, it was late, and I was tired. You did not overcome some great obstacle." The last of the bacon disappeared into her mouth before she added through their bond, Although you're right. I would have explored.

Rin had only just turned toward him when his arms settled around her waist. There had been a time, not very long ago at all, when that kind of easy closeness would have startled her. Now she relaxed against him almost before she consciously decided to do so, her hands settling lightly against his arms while their foreheads came together. The warmth of him at her back was familiar after the nights they had spent sleeping beside one another, but being held by him while fully awake was something else entirely. Something she was still learning how to accept without examining it until all the warmth had been reasoned out of it.

His nose brushing her cheek brought the color in her ears a little higher, especially when his voice dropped near one pointed ear. She could already feel the direction his thoughts were taking and had just begun turning her head toward him when another voice cut across the room. Rin went still, her eyes shifting toward the newcomer first and then immediately back to Muad when the introduction came. For several seconds she simply looked between the two men. There was enough similarity that she could believe the relationship once it had been named, despite the differences between them, but one particular word caught and held her attention.

"Older brother?"

The question escaped before she could stop it. Her golden eyes moved from Derek to Muad and back again, and the confusion in her expression only deepened. Muad had told her enough about his age that she had finally accepted, somewhat reluctantly, that the human beside her had somehow lived for roughly a millennium. That alone had raised questions she had not yet gotten around to asking. Discovering that there was an older brother standing in front of her immediately added several more. Rin had spent long enough among species with wildly different lifespans that longevity itself wasn't particularly strange to her, but humans were another matter entirely. She knew enough about them to know this was not normal.

Are humans supposed to live this long now? The thought escaped across the dyad before she could contain it, carrying with it a vivid mixture of curiosity and disbelief. Her eyes narrowed slightly at Muad as another followed. Because I feel like this is something you neglected to mention.

There would be time to interrogate him later. For now, Rin accepted Derek's offered hand, only to find herself caught slightly off guard when he raised it to his lips rather than simply shaking it. The gesture was formal enough that she recovered quickly, though her ears still warmed faintly. "Rin is fine. And yes, Miss, technically." A small smile appeared as she withdrew her hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

Then the brothers started insulting one another, and Rin slowly lowered herself into her chair while watching the exchange unfold, her expression moving from uncertainty to growing amusement. By the time Muad answered a knife with a spoon, she was openly smiling. There was something almost reassuring about it. Whatever strange circumstances had allowed these two men to accumulate lifetimes that should have been impossible for their species, apparently several centuries had done absolutely nothing to prevent brothers from behaving like brothers.

She reached for her fork once Derek had finished dividing the food, only to feel Muad's hand find hers. Her fingers curled around his automatically, and the ease of the movement gave Rin a brief pause. Somewhere between Batuu and Veradune, reaching for him had stopped being something she thought about. She simply did it now, and judging by the way Derek's crimson eyes dropped toward their joined hands, he had noticed too. The short exchange that followed made Rin progressively more suspicious as she looked from Derek to Muad, watching something pass back and forth between them in a language consisting largely of implication. Serious? That drew her attention toward Muad. I'm in? Her brow climbed. By the time Muad cheerfully volunteered her for questioning and Derek steepled his fingers, Rin knew she was being set up.

"What are your intentions with my baby brother?"

Her fork stopped halfway to her plate as Rin stared at Derek, then turned her head very slowly toward Muad. The smirk on his face told her immediately that absolutely no assistance would be forthcoming. Her golden eyes narrowed at him before she returned her attention to his brother, trying to decide whether she was supposed to take the question seriously or whether this was simply another layer of whatever strange ritual the two men considered sibling affection.

"My intentions?"

It wasn't that Rin hadn't considered what existed between them. Marta and Chek had made avoiding the subject almost impossible, and the medallion resting beneath her clothing had made it more difficult still. She knew she wanted Muad in her life. She knew she wanted whatever came after the strange collection of days and choices that had brought them this far. She knew what it had felt like when his heart stopped beneath her hands and exactly how fiercely she had refused to accept a future in which he was simply gone. None of that prepared her to summarize it neatly for his older brother over breakfast.

Her ears slowly turned red as she glanced at Muad again. Then something in her expression softened, and she gave his hand a small squeeze before looking back toward Derek. "At the moment? Mostly to keep him alive." The answer began lightly, but the humor softened around the edges as memories from Batuu surfaced. "I've had to do that more often than I think should be necessary considering how little time we've actually known each other. He has a remarkable talent for nearly dying, usually while doing something he believes is completely reasonable."

She could feel Muad beside her, the presence of him warm and familiar against her own, and it made what came next easier to say without trying to turn it into something larger than she was ready to define. "Beyond that, I'm still figuring it out." There was no embarrassment in the admission, only honesty. "We met on Batuu. We thought we'd say goodbye there and probably never see one another again. Then we found each other again on Veradune, and neither of us seemed particularly interested in making the same mistake twice." Her eyes dipped briefly toward their joined hands before returning to Derek. "So we're seeing where it goes."

A hint of a smile returned as she glanced sideways at Muad. "Assuming I can keep him alive long enough to find out."

Then Rin looked back at Derek, curiosity finally overcoming the interrogation she had just endured. Her gaze traveled between the brothers once more, lingering on the differences in their eyes before she tilted her head. "Now I think I get a question." Her brow rose as she gestured lightly between them with her free hand. "How are you his older brother? Because I had only just started accepting that he has somehow been alive for around a thousand years, and now there's another one of you who is apparently older."

Her gaze slid toward Muad, carrying a mixture of affection and accusation that passed just as clearly through the bond as it did across her face. "I feel this should have come up."

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

The steepled fingers slowly eased away as blood-red eyes continued their appraisal of the woman as she spoke. While she spoke, they flickered from her face to the openly held hands, to Muad, who wore a rather self-satisfied smirk, and back to Rin. Once she finished her commentary on her intentions, he merely nodded, a glance down at the table before raising back to the young woman who sat across the mahogany table. "You are considerably liberal with information. That is an endearing trait, especially given my profession. Unfortunately, you summed up my brother spectacularly well." Crimson eyes turned to Muad as he finished dryly. "A remarkable talent at nearly dying, usually doing something he believes in." He rose from the table. "Excuse me for a moment."

As he left, Muad couldn't contain his amusement any longer. A short laugh escaped. "I do believe you broke him." Another laugh followed. "Derek isn't what you would call a sharer. That's one of my charming traits, as you recall." He reached across and stole one of the pieces of bacon from off Derek's plate as the sound of footfalls heralded his return. A tray with two pots, several cups, and saucers filled the space. A bowl of sugar cubes and a fluted glass held cream. As he sat back down again, his eyes flickered to his plate, noticing the absence of bacon before looking at Muad, who meticulously, and with great pleasure, licked his finger clean.

"I do not believe we should continue without coffee or tea. Which would you prefer, Miss Taal?" Muad raised his hand. "I'll take the caf with plenty of milk and sugar." His smirk revealed that Muad was enjoying breakfast entirely too much. "Of course you do. You are an uncouth barbarian." Derek made a point of ignoring Muad as he prepared his tea with a splash of cream and a single cube of sugar. He slowly stirred the tea three times clockwise, then twice counterclockwise before tapping the spoon and setting it on the saucer. The cup was collected and held in the palms of his hands as he returned his attention to Rin. Muad busied himself making his own concoction.

"Keeping him alive and keeping him out of trouble are two very diverse scenarios. And while you may excel at the former, the latter is a lost cause. I am speaking from experience." He tipped the cup, taking a sip of his tea before replacing it on the saucer. When Rin asked her question, hand waving in the air before she turned to Muad, Derek excused himself from the conversation. "I believe that inquiry was delivered to you, dear brother." He busied himself with breakfast as he kept his mouth shut to the conversation.

"Thanks a bunch," Muad snidely retorted before turning in his seat toward the woman who held his hand and heart. "In my defense, I did tell you I had a brother on Siskeen. Which is more believable? My parents lived a thousand years then decided to pup another kid, or a sibling managed to live just as long as I did?" He winked at her while still feeling her exasperation. "I figured you would have asked me by now how I've managed to live this long. By draining the life from other people." The comment was spoken matter-of-factly with no indication he was lying. Derek choked on a piece of his omelet. Without turning from Rin, Muad commented, "Serves you right." Then his smile split his face while he shook his head, revealing he was jesting.

A thought occurred to him at that moment. They were still so new to each other that what he said could have been true, which would have been a horrifying revelation, especially over breakfast. "Sorry, darlin', it was a bad joke. We had very different upbringings. And I didn't even know I had a brother before he tried to kill me." Derek cleared his throat and raised his hand to forestall Muad. "That is a gross oversimplification of the facts. I was raised by the Baron Do Sages to respect balance. And I was sent on a mission to remove someone who was tilting the scales toward darkness."

"Are you telling the story or me?" Muad sent a glare at Derek, who merely waved his hand. "I apologize for the intrusion. Please, continue." Muad turned back to Rin with a rueful shake of his head. "As I was saying, these Sages have a death cult thing to extend their lifespans. Sometimes they would siphon off their life force to imbue it into another being sent on a mission. Through a series of events that saw him cursed by some Dathomiri witches, dunked into their ichor, a bond our uncle tethered us with, and the siphoning ceremony … he's kinda immortal. Unless you take his head. Or take a chainsaw sword to his heart." Derek's head tilted down, and he closed his eyes at the second part—clearly a sore subject. Muad continued.

"So, he's been skipping around the galaxy about two years longer than I. And you can ask me any questions you want." At that moment, a hulking woman nearly a head taller than the men at the table sauntered in. Red hair fell to the shoulder of her beskar'gam, her light complexion complemented by a trail of freckles tracing along her cheeks and nose. Green eyes held humor and familiarity as she headed toward Muad. "Any new scars from your last trip, ba'buir?" Muad rose, his hand leaving Rin's as he caught her in an embrace. The two danced sideways in the ferocity of their hug, both grinning wide. Derek continued to fork food into his mouth economically as he answered the unspoken question Rin must surely have had. "Rin Taal, meet Jade Dib. Jade, meet your grandfather's friend, Rin."

Muad turned sideways and held out his hand to assist Rin to her feet. But before Rin could do much of anything, she was swept up in a bear hug, nearly crushed by dark blue beskar plates. "So you're the one everybody is talking about? You're very pretty. And I love your braids!"

"Jade." Derek shook his head slightly, indicating not to continue. But stopping a teenager from talking was akin to asking the sun not to rise. "You're on all the news feeds. I mean, you can't really see much other than y'all running through the rain, but the thermals show y'all went straight to the bedroom. Congrats ba'buir! I guess the only bachelor left is Uncle Derek." As quickly as she hugged the Zorren woman, she was released. One gauntleted hand reached over the table and swiped a strip of nerf steak from Derek's plate before she literally skipped away and down the corridor. A shout echoed from the hall. "Good for you, ba'buir! She's beautiful." And just as suddenly as Jade appeared, she was gone. Muad sheepishly looked at Rin before he motioned back at her chair. "Breakfast?"

Derek shook his head forlornly before turning an accusatory glare at his brother. "See? This is the kind of example you set. If you really want to know how mere mortals live so long, you should ask him about our uncle, Rhaegar. He's lived our lifespans thrice." A small, smug smile crossed his face as his crimson eyes flashed brighter for a second. Then he turned his gaze to Rin. "Tell me, why do I sense you along my bond with my brother? I could do without the extra assault of his emotional state every time he looks at you. Or thinks of you. Or imagines somewhere he wants to take you. Or … other things he dwells on with your complicit involvement."

Rin Taal